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ESSAYS 



AND 



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LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK 



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BY 



GEORGE ELIOT 




NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 



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PREFACE. 



Wishes have often been expressed that the articles 
known to have been written by George Eliot in the 
Westminster Review before she had become famous 
under that pseudonym, should be republished. Those 
wishes are now gratified — as far, at any rate, as it is 
possible to gratify them. For it was not George Eliot's 
desire that the whole of those articles should be rescued 
from oblivion. And in order that there might be no 
doubt on the subject, she made, some time before her 
death, a collection of such of her fugitive writings as 
she considered deserving of a permanent form ; care- 
fully revised them for the press ; and left them, in the 
order in which they here appear, with written injunc- 
tions that no other pieces written by her, of date prior 
to 1857, should be republished. 

It will thus be seen that the present collection of 
Essays has the weight of her sanction, and has had, 
moreover, the advantage of such corrections and alter- 
ations as a revision long subsequent to the period of 
writing may have suggested to her. 

The opportunity afforded by this republication seemed 



iv PREFACE. 

a suitable one for giving to the world some •* notes," as 
George Eliot simply called them, which belong to a 
much later period, and which have not been previously 
published. The exact date of their -writing cannot be 
fixed with any certainty, but it must have been some 
time between the appearance of " Middleraarch " and 
that of " Theophrastus Such." They were probably 
written without any distinct view to publication — some 
of them for the satisfaction of her own mind ; others 
perhaps as memoranda, and with an idea of working 
them out more fully at some later time. It may be of 
interest to know that, besides the "notes" here given, 
the note-book contains four which appeared in " The- 
ophrastus Such," three of them practically as they there 
stand ; and it is not impossible that some of those in the 
present volume might also have been so utilized had 
they not happened to fall outside the general scope of 
the work. The marginal titles are George Eliot's own, 
but for the general title, " Leaves from a Note-book," I 
am responsible. 

I need only add that, in publishing these notes, I have 
the complete concurrence of my friend, Mr. Cross. 

Chaeles Lee Lewes. 

HiGHGATE, December^ 1883. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



ESSAYS. 

PASS 
I. WOBLDLINESS AND GTHER-WOKLDLIlSrESS : THE POET YOUNG 3 

(Westminster Review, 1857.) 

n. GERMAN wit: HEINRICH HEINE 65 

(Westminster Review, 1856.) 

m. EVANGELICAL TEACHING! DR. GUMMING 115 

(Westminster Review, 1855.) 

IV. THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: LECKY'S HISTORY . . 157 

(Fortnightly Review, 1865.) 

V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: RIEHL . . .179 

(Westminster Review, 1856.) 

VI. THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR 226 

(Eraser's Magazine, 1855.) 

VII. ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT 251 

(Blackwood's Magazine, 1868.) 



LEAVES FKOM A NOTE-BOOK. 

AUTHORSHIP ^ 275 

JUDGMENTS ON AUTHORS 281 

STORY-TELLING 284 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGK 

HISTORIC IMAGINATION 288 

VALUE IN ORIGINALITY 290 

TO THE PROSAIC ALL THINGS ARE PROSAIC 290 

"DEAR RELIGIOUS LOVE " 291 

WE MAKE OUR OWN PRECEDENTS 291 

BIRTH OF TOLERANCE 292 

FELIX QUI NON POTUIT , . . . 292 

DWINE GRACE A REAL EMANATION 293 

"A FINE EXCESSo" FEELING IS ENERGY . . 293 



ESSAYS 



¥OELDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLmESS: 
THE POET YOUNG. 

The study of men, as they have appeared in different 
ages, and under various social conditions, may be con- 
sidered as the natural history of the race. Let us, then, 
for a moment imagine ourselves, as students of tliis 
natural history, " dredging " the first half of the eigh- 
teenth century in search of specimens. About the year 
1730 we have hauled up a remarkable individual of the 
species divine — a surprising name, considering the nat- 
ure of the animal before us ; but we are used to un- 
suitable names in natural history. Let us examine this 
individual at our leisure. He is on the verge of fifty, 
and has recently undergone his metamorphosis into the 
clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if you 
observe him narrowly ; a sort of cross between a syco- 
phant and a psahnist; a poet whose imagination is al- 
ternately fired by the " Last Day " and by a creation 
of peers, who fluctuates between rhapsodic applause of 
King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After 
spending " a foolish youth, the sport of peers and 
poets," after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke 
of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a parliamentary 
career, and angling for pensions and preferment with 
fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little dis- 



4 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS .' 

giisted with his imperfect success, and has determined 
to retire from the general mendicancy business to a 
particular branch ; in other words, he has determined 
on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking 
orders," with the prospect of a good living and an ad- 
vantageous matrimonial connection. And he personifies 
the nicest balance of temporalities and spiritualities. He 
is equally impressed with the moraentousuess of death 
and of burial fees ; he languishes at once for immortal 
life and for " livings f' he has a fervid attachment to 
patrons in general, but, on the whole, prefers the Al- 
mighty. He will teach, with something more than of- 
ficial conviction, the nothingness of earthly things ; and 
he will feel something more than private disgust if his 
meritorious efforts in directing men's attention to an- 
other world are not rewarded by substantial preferment 
in this. His secular man believes in cambric bands 
and silk stockings as characteristic attire for " an orna- 
ment of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never 
forget to copy Sir Robert Walpole ; and writes begging- 
letters to the King's mistress. His spiritual man recog- 
nizes no motives more familiar than Golgotha and " the 
skies;" it walks in graveyards, or it soars among the 
stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and 
rebukes, and knows no medium between the ecstatic 
and the sententious. If it were not for the prospect of 
immortality, he considers, it would be wise and agree- 
able to be indecent, or to murder one's father ; and, 
heaven apart, it would be extremely irrational in any 
man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a compound 
of the angel and the brute: the brute is to be humbled 
by being reminded of its " relation to the stalls," and 



1 Tightened into moderation by the contemplation of 



THE POET YOUNG. 

fng] 

deathbeds and skulls ; the angel is to be developed by 
vituperating this world and exalting the next ; and by 
this double process you get the Christian — " the highest 
style of man." With all this, our new-made divine is 
an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly 
of the worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a 
real spark of Promethean fire. He will one day clothe 
his apostrophes and objurgations, his astronomical re- 
ligion and his charnelhouse morality, in lasting verse, 
which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and 
jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive : for this divine 
is Edward Young, the future author of the " Night 
Thoughts." 

Judging from Young's works, one might imagine that 
the preacher had been organized in him by hereditary 
transmission through a long line of clerical forefathers, 
— that the diamonds of the "Night Thoughts" had 
been slowly condensed from the charcoal of ancestral 
sermons. Yet it was not so. His grandfather, ap- 
parently, wrote himself gentleman^ not clerk ; and there 
is no evidence that preaching had run in the family 
blood before it took that turn in the person of the poet's 
father, who was quadruply clerical, being at once rec- 
tor, prebendary, court chaplain, and dean. Young was 
born at his father's rectory of Upham, in 1681. In due 
time the boy went to Winchester College, and subse- 
quently, though not till he was twenty-two, to Oxford, 
where, for his father's sake, he was befriended by the 
wardens of two colleges, and in 1708, three years after 
his father's death, nominated by Archbishop Tenison to 
a law fellowship at All Souls. Of Young's life at Ox- 



6 WOKLDLINESS AND OTHER- W0RLDLINES8 '. 

ford, in these years, hardly anything is known. His 
biographer, Croft, has nothing to tell us but the vague 
report that, when " Young found himself independent 
and his own master at All Souls, he was not the orna- 
ment to religion and morality that he afterwards be- 
came," and the perhaps apocryphal anecdote, that Tin- 
dal, the atheist, confessed himself embarrassed by the 
originality of Young's arguments. Both the report and 
the anecdote, however, are borne out by indirect evi- 
dence. As to the latter, Young has left us sufficient 
proof that he was fond of arguing on the theological 
side, and that he had his own way of treating old sub- 
jects. As to the former, we learn that Pope, after say- 
ing other things which we know to be true of Young, 
added, that he passed "a foolish youth, the sport of 
peers and poets;" and, from all the indications we pos- 
sess of his career till he was nearly fifty, we are inclined 
to think that Pope's statement only errs by defect, and 
that he should rather have said, "a foolish youth and 
middle ageP It is not likely that Young was a very 
hard student, for he impressed Johnson, who saw him 
in his old age, as " not a great scholar," and as surpris- 
ingly ignorant of what Johnson thought "quite common 
maxims" in literature; and there is no evidence that he 
filled either his leisure or his purse by taking pupils. 
His career as an author did not begin till he was nearly 
thirty, even dating from the publication of a portion of 
the "Last Day," in the Tatler ; so that he could hardly 
have been absorbed in composition. But where the 
fully developed insect is parasitic, we believe the larva 
is usually parasitic also, and we shall probably not be 
far wrong in supposing that Young at Oxford, as else- 



THE POET YOUNG. 7 

where, spent a good deal of his time in hanging about 
possible and actual patrons, and accommodating himself 
to their habits with considerable flexibility of conscience 
and of tongue ; being none the less ready, upon occa- 
sion, to present himself as the champion of theology, 
and to rhapsodize at convenient moments in the com- 
pany of the skies or of skulls. That brilliant profligate, 
the Duke of Wharton, to whom Young afterwards clung 
as his chief patron, was at this time a mere boy ; and, 
though it is probable that their intimacy had already 
begun, since the Duke's father and mother were friends 
of the old Dean, that intimacy ought not to aggravate 
any unfavorable inference as to Young's Oxford life. 
It is less likely that he fell into any exceptional vice, 
than that lie differed from the men around him chiefly 
in his episodes of theological advocacy and rhapsodic 
solemnity. He probably sowed his wild oats after the 
coarse fashion of his times, for he has left us sufficient 
evidence that his moral sense was not delicate; but his 
companions, who were occupied in sowing their own oats, 
perhaps took it as a matter of course that he should 
be a rake, and were only struck with the exceptional 
circumstance that he was a pious and moralizing rake. 

There is some irony in the fact that the two first poet- 
ical productions of Young, published in the same year, 
were his " Epistle to Lord Lansdowne," celebrating 
the recent creation of peers — Lord Lansdowne's creation, 
in particular — and the " Last Day." Other poets, be- 
sides Young, found the device for obtaining a Tory 
majority by turning twelve insignificant commoners 
into insignificant lords, an irresistible stimulus to verse; 
but no other poet showed so versatile an enthusiasm, 



8 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 

SO nearly equal an ardor for the honor of the new baron 
and the honor of the Deity. But the twofold nature of 
the sycophant and the psalmist is not more strikingly 
shown in the contrasted themes of the two poems, than 
in the transitions from bombast about monarchs to bom- 
bast about the resurrection, in the " Last Day " itself. 
The dedication of this poem to Queen Anne, Young 
afterwards suppressed, for he was always ashamed of 
having flattered a dead patron. In this dedication, Croft 
tells us, " he gives her Majesty praise indeed for her 
victories, but says that the author is more pleased to 
see her rise from this lower world, soaring above the 
clouds, passing the first and second heavens, and leaving 
the fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose her there, 
he says, but keep her still in view through the bound- 
less spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey 
towards eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of 
heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her 
still onward from the stretch of his imagination, which 
tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth." 

The self-criticism which prompted the suppression of 
the dedication did not, however, lead him to improve 
either the rhyme or the reason of the unfortunate coup- 
let: 

" When other Bourbons reign in other lands, 
And, if men's sins forbid not, other Annes." 

In the "Epistle to Lord Lansdowne" Young indi- 
cates his taste for the drama ; and there is evidence that 
his tragedy of " Busiris " was " in the theatre " as early 
as this very year, 1713, though it was not brought on 
the stage till nearly six years later ; so that Young was 
fiow very decidedly bent on authorship, for which his 



THE POET YOUNG. 9 

degree of B.C.L., taken in this year, was doubtless a 
magical equipment. Another poem, "The Force of 
Religion ; or, Yanquished Love," founded on the execu- 
tion of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, quickly fol- 
lowed, showing fertility in feeble and tasteless verse; 
and on the Queen's death, in 1714, Young lost no time 
in making a poetical lament for a departed patron a 
vehicle for extravagant laudation of the new monarch. 
No further literary production of his appeared until 
1716, when a Latin oration which he delivered, on the 
foundation of the Codrington Library at All Souls, gave 
him a new opportunity for displaying his alacrity in in- 
flated panegyric. 

In 1717 it is probable that Young accompanied the 
Duke of Wharton to Ireland, though so slender are the 
materials for his biography, that the chief basis for this 
supposition is a passage in his " Conjectures on Origi- 
nal Composition," written when he was nearly eighty, in 
which he intimates that he had once been in that coun- 
try. But there are many facts surviving to indicate 
that for the next eight or nine years Young was a sort 
of attache of Wharton's. In 1719, according to legal 
records, the Duke granted him an annuity, in consider 
ation of his having relinquished the office of tutor to 
Lord Burleigh, with a life annuity of £100 a year, on 
his Grace's assurances that he would provide for him in 
a much more ample manner. And again, from the 
same evidence, it appears that in 1721 Young received 
from Wharton a bond for £600, in compensation of ex- 
penses incurred in standing for Parliament at the 
Duke's desire, and as an earnest of greater services 
which his Grace had promised him on his refraining 



10 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER- WOliLDLINESS I 

from the spiritual and temporal advantages of taking 
orders with a certainty of two livings in the gift of hia 
college. It is clear, therefore, that lay advancement, as 
lono- as there was any chance of it, had more attractions 
for Young than clerical preferment ; and that at this 
time he accepted the Duke of Wharton as the pilot of 
his career. 

A more creditable relation of Young's was his friend- 
ship with Tickell, with whom he was in the habit of in- 
terchanging criticisms, and to whom, in 1719 — the same 
year, let us note, in which he took his doctor's degree 
— he addressed his "Lines on the Death of Addison." 
Close upon these followed his " Paraphrase of Part of 
the Book of Job," with a dedication to Parker, recently 
made Lord Chancellor, showing that the possession of 
Wliarton's patronage did not prevent Young from fish- 
ing in other waters. He knew nothing of Parker, but 
that did not prevent him from magnifying the new 
Chancellor's merits; on the other hand, he did know 
Wharton, but this again did not prevent him from pre- 
fixing to his tragedy, " The Revenge," which appeared 
in 1721, a dedication attributing to the Duke all virtues, 
as well as all accomplishments. In the concluding sen- 
tence of this dedication. Young naively indicates that a 
considerable ingredient in his gratitude was a lively 
sense of anticipated favors. " My present fortune is his 
bounty, and my future his care ; which I will venture 
to say will always be remembered to his honor ; since 
he, I know, intended his generosity as an encourage- 
ment to merit, though, through his very pardonable par- 
tiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty and re- 
spect, I happen to receive the benefit of it." Young ; 



THE POET YOUNG. li 

was economical with his ideas and images; he was vare- 
\j satisfied with using a clever thing once, and this bit 
of ingenious humility was afterwards made to do duty 
in the " Instalment," a poem addressed to Walpole : 

" Be this thy jiartial smile, from censure free, 
'Twas meaut for merit, though it fell on me." 

It was probably " The Kevenge '' that Young was 
writing when, as we learn from Spence's anecdotes, the 
Duke of Wharton gave him a skull witli a candle fixed 
in it, as the most appropriate lamp by which to write 
tragedy. According to Young's dedication, the Duke 
was " accessory " to the scenes of this tragedy in a more 
important way, " not only by suggesting the most beau- 
tiful incident in them, but by making all possible pro- 
vision for the success of the whole." A statement 
which is credible, not indeed on the ground of Young's 
dedicatory assertion, but from the known ability of the 
Duke, who, as Pope tells us, possessed 

"each gift of Nature and of Art, 
And wanted nothing but an honest heart." 

The year 1722 seems to have been the period of a 
visit to Mr. Dodington, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire — the 
" pure Dorsetian downs " celebrated by Thomson — in 
which Young made the acquaintance of Voltaire ; for 
in the subsequent dedication of his "Sea Piece" to 
"Mr. Yoltaire," he recalls their meeting on Dorset 
Downs ; and it was in this year that Christopher Pitt, a 
gentleman-poet of those days, addressed an "Epistle to 
Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire," which 
has at least the merit of this biographical couplet : 

" While with your Dodington retired you sit, 
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit." 



J 2 WORLDLINESS AND OTHEK-WOflLDLINESS : 

Dodington, apparently, was clianned in his turn, for he 
told Dr. Warton tliat Young was "far superior to the 
French poet in the variety and novelty of his ton-mots 
and repartees." Unfortunately, the only specimen of 
Young's wit on this occasion that has been preserved to 
US is the epigram represented as an extempore retort 
(spoken aside, surely) to Yoltaire's criticism of Milton's 
episode of Sin and Death : 

"Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, 
At ouce we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin ;" — 

an epigram which, in the absence of " flowing Burgun- 
dy," does not strike us as remarkably brilliant. Let us 
give Young the benefit of the doubt thrown on the gen- 
uineness of this epigram by his own poetical dedication, 
in which he represents hilnself as having "soothed" 
Yoltaire's " rage " against Milton " with gentle rhymes ;" 
though in other respects that dedication is anything but 
favorable to a high estimate of Young's wit. Other ev- 
idence apart, we should not be eager for the after-din- 
nQv conversation of the man who wrote, 

"Thine is the Drama, how reuown'd ! 
Thine Epic's k)ftier trnrap to sound ; — 
But let Arion^s sea-strung harp he mine: 
But ivhere's his dolphin ? Enoiv'st thou where f 
May that lye found in thee, Voltaire!" 

The " Satires " appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, of 
course, with its laudatory dedication and its compli- 
ments insinuated among the rhymes. The seventh and 
last is dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, is very short, 
and contains nothing in particular except lunatic flattery 
of George I. and his prime minister, attributing that 
monarch's late escape from a storm at ^ea to the mirac- 



THE POET YOUNG. 13 

ulcus influence of his grand and virtuous soul— foss 
George, he sajs, rivals the angels : 

" George, who iu foes can soft affections raise, 
And charm envenomed satire into praise. 
Nor human rage alone his pow'r perceives, 
But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves. 
Ev'n storms (Death's fiercest ministers!) forbear, 
And iu their own wild empire learn to spare. 
Thus, Nature's self, supporting Man's decree, 
Styles Britain's sovereign, sovereign of the sea." 

As for Walpole, what lie felt at this tremendous 

crisis 

"No powers of language, but his own, can tell, — 
His own, which Nature and the Graces form, 
At will, to raise, or hush, the civil storm." 

It is a coincidence worth noticing, that this seventh 
Satire was publislied in 1726, and tliat the warrant of 
George I., granting Young a pension of £200 a-year 
from Lady-dav, lT25,*is dated May 3, 1726. The grati- 
tude exhibited in tliis Satire may have been chiefly 
prospective, bnt the " Instalment " — a poem inspired by 
the thrilling event of Walpole's installation as Knight 
of the Garter — was clearly written with the double 
ardor of a man who has got a pension, and hopes 
for something more. His emotion about Walpole is 
precisely at the same pitch as his subsequent emotion 
about the Second Advent. In the "Instalment" he 

says: 

" With invocations some their hearts inflame ; 

I need no muse, a Walpole is my theme" 

And of God coming to judgment, he says, in the " Night 
Thoughts -:' 



14 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER- WOELDLINESS : 

" I jQnfl my inspiration in my theme ; 
The grandeur of my subject is my muse." 

'Nothing can be feebler than this " Instalment," 
except in the strength of impudence with which the 
writer professes to scorn the prostitution of fair fame, 
the " profanation of celestial fire." 

Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more than 
three thousand pounds by his " Satires " — a surprising 
statement, taken in connection with the reasonable 
doubt he throws on the story related in Spence's "Anec- 
dotes," that the Duke of Wharton gave Young £2000 
for this work. Young, however, seems to have been 
tolerably fortunate in the pecuniary results of his pub- 
lications ; and with his literary profits, his annuity from 
Wharton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to men- 
tion other bounties which may be inferred from the high 
merits he discovers in many men of wealth and posi- 
tion, we may fairly suppose that he now laid the founda- 
tion of the considerable fortune he left at his death. 

It is probable that the Duke of Wharton's final depart- 
ure for the Continent and disgrace at Court in 1726, and 
the consequent cessation of Young's reliance on his pat- 
ronage, tended not only to heighten the temperature of 
his poetical enthusiasm for Sir Robert Walpole, but also 
to turn his thoughts towards the Church again, as the 
second-best means of rising in the world. On the acces- 
sion of George II., Young found the same transcendent 
merits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated them 
in a style of poetry previously unattempted by him — 
the Pindaric ode, a poetic form which helped him to 
surpass himself in furious bombast. " Ocean, an Ode : 
concluding with a Wish," was the title of this piece. 



THE POET YOUNG. 15 

He afterwards pruned it, and cut off, among other 
things, the concluding Wish, expressing the yearning for 
humble retirement, which, of course, had prompted him 
to the effusion ; but we may judge of the rejected stan- 
zas by the quality of those he has allowed to remain. 
For example, calling on Britain's dead mariners to rise 
and meet their "country's full-blown glory " in the per- 
son of the new King, he says : 

" What powerful charm 
Can death disarm ? 
" Your long, your iron slumbers break f 

By Jove, hy Fame, 
By Georges 7iame 
Awake! awake! awake! awake !" 

Soon after this notable production, which was writ- 
ten with the ripe folly of forty-seven, Young took or- 
ders, and was presently appointed chapjain to the King. 
" The Brothers," his third and last tragedy, which was 
already in rehearsal, he now withdrew from the stage, 
and sought reputation in a way more accordant with the 
decorum of his new profession, by turning prose-writer. 
But after publishing " A True Estimate of Human 
Life," with a dedication to the Queen, as one of the 
" most shining representatives" of God on earth, and a 
sermon, entitled " An Apology for Princes ; or, the Rev- 
erence due to Government," preached before the House 
of Commons, his Pindaric ambition again seized him, 
and he matched his former ode by another, called " Im- 
perium Pelagi ; a Kaval Lyric, written in Imitation 
of Pindar's Spirit, occasioned by his Majesty's Return 
from Hanover, 1729, and the succeeding Peace." Since 
be afterwards suppressed this second ode, we must suj> 



IC WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 

pose that it was rather worse than the first. Next came 
his two "Epistles to Pope, concerning the Authors 
of the Age," remarkable for nothing but the audacity 
of affectation with which the most servile of poets pro- 
fesses to despise servility. 

In 1730, Young was presented by his college with the 
rectory of Welwyn,in Hertfordshire; and in the fol- 
lowing year, when he was jnst fifty, he married Lady 
Elizabeth Lee, a widow with two children, who seems to 
have been in favor with Queen Caroline, and who- prob- 
ably had an income — two attractions which doubtless 
enhanced the power of her other charms. Pastoral du- 
ties and domesticity probably cured Young of some bad 
habits; but, unhappily, they did not cure him either of 
flattery or of fustian. Three more odes followed, quite 
as bad as those of his bachelorhood, except that in the 
third he announced the wise resolution of never writing 
another. It must have been about this time, since 
Young was now " turned of fifty," that he wrote the 
letter to Mrs. Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk), George 
II.'s mistress, which proves that he used other engines, 
besides the Pindaric, in " besieging Court favor." The 
letter is too characteristic to be omitted : 

^'^ Monday Morning.. 
^'' Madam, — I know his majesty's goodness to bis servants, and his 
love of justice in general, so well, that I am confident, if his majes- 
ty knew my case, I should not have any cause to despair of his 
gracious favor to me. 



for his 
majesty. 



'' Abilities. 


Want. 


Good Manners. 


Sufferings 


Service. 


and 


Age. 


Zeal 



THE POET YOUNG. 17 

These, madam, are the proper points of consideration in the person 
that humbly hopes his majesty's favor. 

" As to Abilities, all I can presume to say is, I have done the best 
I could to improve them. 

" As to Good Manners, I desire no favor, if any just objection lies 
agaiust them. 

" As for Service, I have been near seven years in his majesty's, and 
never omitted any duty in it, which few can say. 

" As for Age, I am turned of fifty. 

" As for Want, I have no mauner of preferment. 

" As for Sufferings, I have lost £300 per auu. by being in his majes- 
ty's seryice ; as I have shown in a Representation which his majesty 
has been so good as to read and consider. 

"As for Zeal, I have written nothing without showing my duty 
to their majesties, and some pieces are dedicated to them. 

" This, madam, is the short and true state of my case. They that 
make their court to the ministers, and not their majesties, suc- 
ceed better. If my case deserves some consideration, and you can 
serve me in it, I humbly hope and believe you will : I shall, there- 
fore, trouble you no farther ; but beg leave to subscribe myself, 
with truest respect and grjititude, yours, etc., 

Edward Young. 

"P. S. — I have some hope that my Lord Townshend is my 
friend ; if therefore soon, and before he leaves the court, you had 
an opportunity of mentioning me, with that favor you have been 
so good to show, I think it would not fail of success ; and, if not, 
I shall owe you more than any." — Suffolk Letters, vol. i. p. 285. 

Young's wife died in 1741, leaving him one son, born 
in 1733. That he had attached himself strongly to her 
two daughters by her former marriage, there is better 
evidence in the report, mentioned by Mrs. Montagu, of 
his practical kindness and liberality to the younger, than 
in his lamentations over the elder as the "Narcissa " of 
tlie " Night Thoughts." " Narcissa " had died in 1735, 
shortly after marriage to Mr. Temple, the son of Lord 



18 WORLDLINESS AOTD OTHER- WORLDLINESS I 

Palmerston; and Mr. Temple himself, after a second 
marriage, died in 1740, a year before Lady Elizabeth 
Young. These, then, are the three deaths supposed to 
have inspired " The Complaint," which forms the three 
first books of the " Night Thoughts :" 

" Insatiate archer, could not one suffice ? 
Thy shaft flew thrice ; and thrice my peace was slain ; 
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn." 

Since we find Young departing from the truth of dates, 
in order to heighten the effect of his calamity, or at 
least of his climax, we need not be surprised that he 
allowed his imagination great freedom in other matters 
besides chronology, and that the character of " Philan- 
der " can, by no process, be made to fit Mr. Temple. The 
supposition that the much-lectured " Lorenzo " of the 
" Night Thoughts" was Young's own son is hardly ren- 
dered more absurd by the fact that the poem was written 
when that son was a boy, than by the obvious artificiality 
of the characters Young introduces as targets for his 
arguments and rebukes. Among all the trivial efforts of 
conjectural criticism, there can hardly be one more futile 
than the attempt to discover the original of those piti- 
able lay-figures, the " Lorenzos " and " Altamonts " of 
Young's didactic prose and poetry. His muse never 
stood face to face with a genuine, living human being ; 
she would have been as much startled by such an en- 
counter as a stage necromancer whose incantations and 
blue fire had actually conjured up a demon. 

The " Night Thoughts " appeared between 1741 and 
1745. Although he declares in them that he has chosen 
God for his " patron " henceforth, this is not at all to 
the prejudice of some half-dozen lords, duchesses, and 



THE POET YOUNG. 19 

right honorables, who have the privilege of sharing fine- 
ly turned compliments with their co-patron. The line 
which closed the Second Night in tlie earlier editions : 
"Wits spare not Heaven, O Wilmington ! — nor thee" — 

is an intense specimen of that perilous juxtaposition of 
ideas by which Young, in his incessant search after 
point and novelty, unconsciously converts his compli- 
ments into sarcasms ; and his apostrophe to the moon, as 
more likely to be favorable to his song if he calls her 
" fair Portland of the skies," is worthy even of his Pin- 
daric ravings. His ostentatious renunciation of world- 
ly schemes, and especially of his twenty years' siege of 
Court favor, are in the tone of one who retains some 
hope, in the midst of his querulousness. 

He descended from the astronomical rhapsodies of his 
Ninth Night, published in 1745, to more terrestrial 
strains, in his " Peiiections on the Public Situation of 
the Kingdom," dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle ; but 
in this critical year we get a glimpse of him through a 
more prosaic and less refracting medium. He spent a 
part of the year at Tunbridge Wells ; and Mrs. Montagu, 
who was there too, gives a very lively picture of the 
" divine Doctor " in her letters to the Duchess of Port- 
land, on whom Young had bestowed the superlative 
bombast to which we have just referred. We shall bor- 
row the quotations from Dr. Doran, in spite of their 
length, because, to our mind, they present the most 
agreeable portrait we possess of Young : 

" ' I have great joy in Dr. Young, whom I disturbed in a revery. 
At first he started, then bowed, then fell back into a surprise ; then 
begau a speech, relapsed into his astonishment two or three times, 
forgot what he had been saying ; begau a new subject, and so weut 



20 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER WORLDLINESS : 

ou. I told him your grace desired he would write longer letters; 
to which he cried " Ha !" most emphatically, and I leave you to in- 
terpret what it meant. He has made a friendship with one person 
here, whom I believe you would not imagine to have been made for 
his bosom friend. You would, perhaps, suppose it was a bishop or 
dean, a prebend, a pious preacher, a clergyman of exemplary life, 
or, if a layman, of most virtuous conversation, one that had para- 
phrased St. Matthew, or wrote comments on St. Paul. . . . You 
would not guess that this associate of the doctor's was — old 
Gibber! Certainly, in their religious, moral, and civil character, 
there is no relation ; but in their dramatic capacity there is some.' 
Mrs. Montagu was not aware that Gibber, whom Young had 
named not disparagingly in his Satires, was the brother of his old 
schoolfellow ; but to return to our hero. ' The waters,' says Mrs. 
Montagu, ' have raised his spirits to a fine x)itcli, as your grace will 
imagine, when I tell you how sublime an answer he made to a very 
vulgar question. I asked him how long he stayed at the Wells : 
he said, As long as my rival stayed ; — as long as the sun did.' 
Among the visitors at the Wells were Lady Sunderland (wife of 
Sir Robert Sutton) and her sister, Mrs. Tichborne. ' He did an ad- 
mirable thing to Lady Sunderland : on her mentioning Sir Robert 
Sutton, he asked her where Sir Robert's lady was ; on which we all 
laughed very heartily, and I brought him off, half ashamed, to my 
lodgings, where, during breakfast, he assured me he had asked after 
Lady Sunderland because he had a great honor for her ; and that, 
having a respect for her sister, he designed to have inquired after 
her, if w^e had not put it out of his head by laughing at him. You 
must know, Mrs. Tichborne sat next to Lady Sunderland. It would 
have been admirable to have had him finish his compliment in that 
manner.' . . . ' His expressions all bear the stamp of novelty, and 
his thoughts of sterling sense. He practises a kind of philosoph- 
ical abstinence. . . . He carried Mrs. Rolt and myself to Tun- 
bridge, five miles from hence, where we were to see some fine old 
ruins . . . First rode the doctor on a tall steed, decently capari- 
soned in dark gray ; next, ambled Mrs. Rolt on a hackney horse ; 
. . . then followed your humble servant on a milk - white pal- 
frey. I rode on in safety, and at leisure to observe the company, 



THE rOET YOUNG. 21 

especially the two figures that brought up the rear. The first was 
my servant, valiantly armed with two uncharged pistols ; the last 
wa« the doctor's man, whose uncombed hair so resembled the mane 
of the horse he rode, one could not help imagining they were of kin, 
and wishing, for the honor of the family, that they had had one 
comb betwixt them. On his head was a velvet cap, much resem- 
bling a black saucepan, and on his side hung a little basket. At 
last we arrived at the King's Head, where the loyalty of the doctor 
induced him to alight ; and then, knight-errant-like, he took his 
damsels from off their palfreys, and courteously handed us into the 
inn.' . . . The party returned to the Wells; and Hhe silver Cyn- 
thia held up her lamp in the heavens ' the while. ' The night 
silenced*all but our divine doctor, who sometimes uttered things 
fit to be spoken in a season when all nature seems to be hushed 
and hearkening. I followed, gathering wisdom as I went, till I 
found, by my horse's stumbling, that I was in a bad road, and that 
the blind was leading the blind. So I placed my servant between 
the doctor and myself; which he not perceiving, went on in a most 
philosophical strain, to the great admiration of my poor clown of a 
servant, who, not being wrought up to any pitch of enthusiasm, 
nor making any answer to all the fine things he heard, the doctor, 
wondering I was dumb, and grieving I was so stupid, looked round 
aud declared his surprise.' " 

Young's oddity and absence of mind are gathered 
from other sources besides these stories of Mrs. Monta- 
gu's, and gave rise to the report that he was the original 
of Fielding's " Parson Adams ;" but this Croft denies, 
and mentions another Young, who really sat for the 
portrait, and who, we imagine, had both more Greek 
and more genuine simplicity than the poet. His love 
of chatting with Colley Gibber was an indication that 
tlie old predilection for the stage survived, in spite of 
his contempt for " all joys but joys that never can ex- 
pire ;" and the production of " The Brothers" at Drury 
Lane in 1753, after a suppression of hfteen years, was 



22 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS ; 

perhaps not entirely due to the expressed desire to give 
the proceeds to the Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel. The author's profits were not more than £400 
— in those days a disappointing sum ; and Young, as we 
learn from his friend Richardson, did not make this the 
limit of his donation, but gave a thousand guineas to the 
Society. " I had some talk with him," says Richardson, 
in one of his letters, ''about this great action. 'I al- 
ways,' said he, ' intended to do something handsome for 
the Society. Had I deferred it to my demise, I should 
have given away my son's money. All the world are 
inclined to pleasure ; could I have given myself a great- 
er by disposing of the sum to a different use, I should 
have done it.' " 

His next work was " The Centaur not Fabulous ; in 
Six Letters to a Friend, on the Life in Yogue," which 
reads very much like the most objurgatory parts of the 
" Night Thoughts " reduced to prose. It is preceded 
by a preface which, though addressed to a lady, is in its 
denunciations of vice as grossly indecent and almost as 
flippant as the epilogues written by " friends," which 
he allowed to be reprinted after his tragedies in the 
latest edition of his works. We like, much better than 
" The Centaur," " Conjectures on Original Composi- 
tion," written in 1759, for the sake, he says, of commu- 
nicating to the world the well-known anecdote about 
Addison's deathbed, and, with the exception of his poem 
on Resignation, the last thing he ever published. 

The estrangement from his son, which must have em- 
bittered the later years of his life, appears to have begun 
not many years after the mother's death. On the mar- 
riage of her second daughter, who had previously pre- 



THE POET YOUNG. 23 

sided over YouDg's household, a Mrs. Hallows, under- 
stood to be a woman of discreet age, and the daughter 
(or widow) of a clergyman who was an old friend of 
Young's, became housekeeper at Welwyn. Opinions 
about ladies are apt to differ. " Mrs. Hallows was a 
woman of piety, improved by reading," says one witness. 
" She was a very coarse woman," says Dr. Johnson ; and 
we shall presently find some indirect evidence that her 
temper was perhaps not quite so much improved as her 
piety. Servants, it seems, were not fond of remaining 
long in the house with her; a satirical curate, named 
Kidgell, hints at " drops of juniper" taken as a cordial 
(but perhaps he was spiteful, and a teetotaler) ; and 
Young's son is said to have told his father that " an old 
man should not resign himself to the management of any- 
body." The result was, that the son was banished from 
home for the rest of his father's lifetime, though Young 
seems never to have thought of disinheriting him. 

Our latest glimpses* of the aged poet are derived from 
certain letters of Mr. Jones, his curate — letters preserved 
in the British Museum, and, happily, made accessible to 
common mortals in Nichols's " Anecdotes." Mr. Jones 
was a man of some literary activity and ambition — a 
collector of interesting documents, and one of those con- 
cerned in the " Free and Candid Disquisitions," the de- 
sign of which was " to point out such things in our 
ecclesiastical establishment as want to be reviewed and 
amended." On these and kindred subjects he corre- 
sponded with Dr. Birch, occasionally troubling him with 
queries and manuscripts. We have a respect for Mr. 
Jones. Unlike most persons who trouble others i^n'th 
queries or manuscripts, he mitigates the infliction by 



24 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS *. 

such gifts as " a fat pullet," wishing he " had anything 
better to send; but this depauperizing vicarage (of Al- 
conbury) too often checks the freedom and forwardness 
of my mind." Another day comes a " pound canister 
of tea ;" another, a ^' young fatted goose." Mr. Jones's 
first letter from Welwyn is dated June, 1759, not quite 
six years before Young's death. In June, 1762, he ex- 
presses a wish to go to London " this summer. But," 
he continues, 

" My time and pains are almost continually taken up here, and 
... I have been (I now find) a considerable loser, upon the whole, 
by coutiuuiug here so long. The consideration of this, and the in- 
convenience I sustained, and do still experience, from my late ill- 
ness, obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor (Young) with my 
case, and to assure him that I plainly perceived the duty and con- 
finement here to be too much for me; for which reason I must (I 
said) beg to be at liberty to resigu my charge at Michaelmas. I be- 
gan to give him these notices in February, when I was very ill ; 
aud now I perceive, by what he told me the other day, that he is 
in some difficulty ; for which reason he is at last (he says) resolved 
to advertise, and even {which is much wondered at) to raise the salary 
considerably higher. (What he allowed my predecessors was £20 per 
annum ; and now he proposes £50, as he tells me.) I never asked 
him to raise it for me, though I well knew it was not equal to the 
duty ; nor did I say a word about myself when he lately suggested 
to me his intentions upon this subject." 

In a postscript to this letter he says : 

" I may mention to you farther, as a friend that may be trusted, 
that, in all likelihood, the poor old gentleman will not find it a 
very easy matter, unless by dint of money, and force upon himself, to 
procure a man that he can like for his next curate, nor one that will 
stay ivith him so long as I have done. Then, his great age will recur 
to people's thoughts ; and if he has any foibles, either in temper or 
conduct, they will be sure not to be forgotten on this occasion by 



THE POET YOUNG. 25 

tbose who know him ; and those who do not will probably be on 
their guard. On these and the like considerations, it is by no meaus 
an eligible office to be seeking out for a curate for him, as he has 
several times wished me to do ; and would, if he knew that I am 
now writing to you, wish your assistance also. But my best friends 
here, who ivell foresee the provable consequences, and wish me well, 
earnestly dissuade me from complying ; and I will decline the of- 
fice with as much decency as I can ; but high salary will, I suppose^ 
fetch in somebody or other, soon." 

In the following July he writes : 

"The old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you freely) 
seems to me to be in at pretty odd way of late — moping, dejected, self- 
willed, and as if surrounded with some perplexing circumstances. 
Though I visit him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very 
little to his affairs, not choosing to be a party concerned, especially 
in cases of so critical and tender a nature. There is much mystery 
in almost all his temporal affairs, as well as in many of his specula- 
tive theories. Whoever lives in this neighborhood to see his exit, 
will probably see and hear some very strange things. Time will 
show ; I am afraid, not greatly to his credit. There is thought to 
be ati irremovahle obstruction to his happiness ivithin his tvalls, as well as 
anothei' without them ; but the former is the more powerful, and like 
to continue so. He has this day been trying anew to engage me 
to stay with him. No lucrative views can tempt me to sacrifice 
my liberty or my health to such measures as are proposed here. 
Nor do I like to have to do unth persons ivhose word and honor cannot 
he depended on. So much for this very odd and unhappy topic." 

In August, Mr. Jones's tone is slightly modified. 
Earnest entreaties, not lucrativ^e considerations, have in- 
duced him to cheer the Doctor's dejected heart by re- 
maining at Welwyn some time longer. The Doctor is, 
" In various respects, a very unhappy man," and few 
know so mucli of these "respects" as Mr. Jones. In 

September he recurs to the subject : 

2 



26 WORLDLINESS AND OTHEK-WOELDLINESS J 

" My ancient gentleman here is still full of trouble : which morea 
my concern, though it moves only the secret laughter of many, and 
some untoward surmises in disfavor of him and his household. The 
loss of a very large sum of money (about £200) is talked of; where- 
of this vill and neighborhood is full. Some disbelieve j others say, 
*' It is no wonder, where about eighteen or more servants are sometimes 
taken and dismissed in the course of a year J The gentleman himself 
is allowed by all to be far more harmless and easy in his family 
than some one else who hath too much the lead in it. This, among 
others, was one reason for my late motion to quit." 

No other mention of Young's affairs occurs until 
April 2, 1765, when he says that Dr. Young is very ill, 
attended by two physicians : 

" Having mentioned this young gentleman (Dr. Young's son), I 
would acquaint you next, that he came hither this morning, having 
been sent for, as I am told, by the direction of Mrs. Hallows. In- 
deed, she intimated to me as much herself. And if this be so, I 
must say that it is one of the most prudent acts she ever did, or 
could have done, in such a case as this ; as it may prove a means of 
preventing much confusion after the death of the Doctor. I have 
had some little discourse with the sou : he seems much affected, 
and I believe really is so. He earnestly wishes his father might be 
pleased to ask after him ; for you must know he has not yet done 
this, nor is, in my opinion, like to do it. And it has been said 
farther, that upon a late application made to him on the behalf of 
his son, he desired that no more might be said to him about it. How 
true this may be, I cannot as yet be certain ; all I shall say is, it 
seems not improbable. ... 1 heartily wish the ancient man's heart 
may prove tender towards his son ; though, knowing him so well, I can 
scarce hope to hear such desirable news." 

Eleven days later, he writes : 

" I have now the pleasure to acquaint you, that the late Dr. 
Young, though he had for many years kept his sou at a distance 
from him, yet has now at last left him all his possessions, after the 



THE POET YOUNG. 27 

payment of certain legacies ; so that the young gentleman (who 
bears a fair character, and behaves well, as far as I can hear or see) 
will, I hope, soon eujoy and make a prudent use of a handsome 
fortune. The father, on his deathbed, and since my return from 
London, was applied to in the tenderest manner, by one of his 
physicians, and by another person, to admit the son into his pres- 
ence, to make submission, entreat forgiveness, and obtain his bless- 
ing. As to an iuterview with his son, he iutimated that he chose 
to decline it, as his spirits were then low and his nerves weak. 
With regard to the next particular, he said, ' I heartily forgive him;' 
aud upon mention of this last, he gently lifted up his hand, and let- 
ting it gently fall,prouounced these words/ God bless him ." . . . I know 
it will give you pleasure to be farther informed that he was pleased 
to make respectful mention of me in his will ; expressing his satis- 
faction in my care of his parish, bequeathing to me a handsome legacy, 
and appointing me to be one of his executors." 

So far Mr. Jcnes, in his confidential correspondence 
with a "friend who may be trusted." In a letter com- 
municated, apparently by him, to the Gentleman's 
Magazine seventeen jears later — namely, in 1782 — on 
the appearance of Croft's biography of Young, we find 
liim speaking of "the ancient gentleman" in a tone of 
reverential eulogy, quite at variance with the free com- 
ments we have just quoted. But the Kev. John Jones 
was probably of opinion, with Mrs. Montagu, whose con- 
temporary and retrospective letters are also set in a dif- 
ferent key, that "the interests of religion were connected 
with the character of a man so distinguished for piety 
as Dr. Young." At all events, a subsequent quasi of- 
ficial statement weighs nothing as evidence against con- 
temporary, spontaneous, and confidential hints. 

To Mrs. Hallows Young left a legacy of £1000, with 
the request that she would destroy all his manuscripts. 
This final request, from some unknown cause, was not 



28 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WOKLDLINESS I 

complied with, and among the papers he left behind 
him was the following letter from Archbishop Seeker, 
which probably marks the date of his latest effort after 
^preferment : 

" Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8, 1758. 
" Good Dr. Young, — I have long wondered that more suitable 
notice of your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. 
But how to remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath 
ever been given me to mention things of this nature to his Majesty. 
And therefore, in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it 
would be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly 
have on some other occasions. Tour fortune and your refutation set 
you above the need of advancement ; and your sentiments above that con- 
cern for it on your own account, which, on that of the public, is sin- 
cerely felt by Your loving Brother, 

" Tho., Cant." 

The loving brother's irony is severe ! 

Perhaps the least questionable testimony to the better 
side of Young's character is that of Bishop Hildesley, 
who, as the vicar of a parish near Welwyn, had been 
Young's neighbor for upwards of twenty years. The 
affection of tlie clergy for each other, we have observed, 
is, like that of the fair sex, not at all of a blind and in- 
fatuated kind ; and we may therefore the rather believe 
them when they give each other any extra-official praise. 
Bishop Hildesley, then, writing of Young to Eichard- 
son, says : 

" The impertinence of my frequent visits to him was amply re- 
warded ; forasmuch as, I can truly say, he never received me Out 
with agreeable open complacency ; and I never left him but with 
profitable pleasure and improvement. He was one or other, the 
most modest, the most patient of contradiction, and the most in- 
forming and entertaining I ever conversed with — at least, of an^ 
man who had so just pretensions to pertinacity and reserve." 



THE POET YOUNG. 29 

Mr. Langton, however, who was also a frequent visitor 
of Young's, informed Boswell, 

" That there was an air of benevolence in his manner ; but that he 
could obtain from him less information than he had hoped to receive 
from one who had lived so much in intercourse with the brightest 
men of what had been called the Augustan age of England ; and 
that he showed a degree of eager curiosity concerning the common 
occurrences that were then passing, which appeared somewhat re- 
markable in a man of such intellectual stores, of such an advanced 
age, and who had retired from life with declared disappointment in 
his expectations." 

The same substance, we know, will exhibit different 
qualities under different tests; and, after all, imperfect 
reports of individual impressions, whether immediate or 
traditional, are a very frail basis on which to build our 
opinion of a man. One's character may be very indif- 
ferently mirrored in the mind of the most intimate 
neighbor; it all depends on the quality of that gentle- 
man's reflecting surface. 

But, discarding any inferences from such uncertain 
evidence, the outline of Young's character is too distinct- 
ly traceable in the well-attested facts of his life, and yet 
more in the self-betrayal that runs through all his works, 
for us to fear that our general estimate of him may be 
false. For, while no poet seems less easy and spontane- 
ous than Young, no poet discloses himself more com- 
pletely. Men's minds have no hiding-place out of 
tliemselves — their affectations do but betray another 
phase of their nature. And if, in the present view of 
Young, we seem to be more intent on laying bare un- 
favorable facts than on shrouding them in charitable 
speeches, it is not because we have any irreverential 



30 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 

pleasure in turning men's characters the seamy side 
without, but because we see no great advantage in con- 
sidering a man as he was not. Young's biographers and 
critics have usually set out from the position that he 
was a great religious teacher, and that his poetry is moral- 
ly sublime ; and they have toned down his failings into 
harmony with their conception of the divine and the 
poet. For our own part, we set out from precisely the 
opposite conviction — namely, that the religious and 
moral spirit of Young's poetry is low and false; and we 
think it of some importance to show that the '^ Night 
Thoughts" are the reflex of a mind in which the higher 
human sympathies were inactive. This judgment is 
entirely opposed to our youthful predilections and en- 
thusiasm. The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment 
lingers about many a page of the ^' Night Thoughts," 
and even of the " Last Day," giving an extrinsic charm 
to passages of stilted rhetoric and false sentiment ; but 
the sober and repeated reading of maturer years has 
convinced us that it would hardly be possible to find a 
more typical instance than Young's poetry of the mis*- 
take which substitutes interested obedience for sympa- 
thetic emotion, and baptizes egoism as religion. 

Pope said of Young that he had " much of a sublime 
genius without common-sense." The deficiency Pope 
meant to indicate was, we imagine, moral rather than in- 
tellectual : it was the want of that fine sense of what is 
fitting in speech and action which is often eminently 
possessed by men and women whose intellect is of a 
very common order, but who have the sincerity and 
dignity which can never coexist with the selfish preoc' 



THE POET YOUNG. 61 

cnpations of vanity or interest. This was the " common- 
sense " in which Yonng was conspicuously deficient ; 
and it was partly owing to this deficiency that his genius, 
waiting to be determined by the highest prizes, fluttered 
uncertainly from effort to effort, until, when he was 
more than sixty, it suddenly spread its broad wing, and 
soared so as to arrest the gaze of other generations be- 
sides his own. For he had no versatility of faculty to 
mislead him. The " Night Thoughts " only differ from 
his previous works in the degree and not in the kind of 
power they manifest. Whether he writes prose or 
poetry, rhyme or blank verse, dramas, satires, odes, or 
meditations, we see everywhere the same Young — the 
same narrow circle of thoughts, the same love of ab- 
stractions, the same telescopic view of human things, the 
same appetency towards antithetic apothegm and rhap- 
sodic climax. The passages that arrest us in his trag- 
edies are those in which he anticipates some fine passage 
in the " Night Thoughts," and where his characters are 
only transparent shadows through which we see the be- 
wigged embonpoint of the didactic poet, excogitating 
epigrams or ecstatic soliloquies by the light of a candlo 
fixed in a skuU. Thus, in "The Revenge," Alonzo, in 
the conflict of jealousy and love that at once urges and 
forbids him to murder his wife, says : 

" This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun, 
Those sk|es, through which it rolls, must all have end. 
What then is man ? The smallest part of nothing. 
Day buries day ; month, month ; and year the year! 
Our life is but a chain of many deaths. 
Can then Death's self be feared ? Our life much rather •• 
Life is the desert^ life the solitude; 
Death joins us to the great majority : 



32 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS I 

'Tis to be born to Plato and to CsBsar ; 

'Tis to be great forever ; 

'Tis pleasure, 'tis ambition, then, to die." 

His prose writings all read like the " Night Thoughts," 
either diluted into prose, or not yet crystallized into 
poetry. For example, in his " Thoughts for Age," he 
says : 

" Though we stand on its awful brink, such our leaden bias to 
the world, we turn our faces the wrong way ; we are still looking 
on our old acquaintance, Time; though now so wasted and reduced, 
that we can see little more of him than his wings and his scythe : 
our age enlarges his wings to our imagination ; and our fear of 
death, his scythe ; as Time himself grows less. His consumption 
is deep ; his annihilation is at hand." 

This is a dilution of the magnificent image : 

"Time in advance "behind him hides his wings, 
And seems to creep decrepit with his age. 
Behold him when past by ! What then is seen 
But his proud pinions, swifter than the winds?" 

Again : 

" A requesting Omnipotence ? What can stun and confound thy 
reason more ? What more can ravish and exalt thy heart ? It 
cannot but ravish and exalt ; it cannot but gloriously disturb and 
perplex thee, to take in all that thought suggests. Thou child of 
the dust ! thou speck of misery and sin ! how abject thy weakness ! 
how great is thy power ! Thou crawler on earth, and possible (I 
was about to say) controller of the skies ! weigh, and weigh well, 
the wondrous truths I have in view : which cannot be weighed too 
much ; which the more they are weighed, amaze the more ; which 
to have supposed, before they were revealed, would have been as 
great madness, and to have presumed on as great sin, as it is now 
madness and sin not to believe." 

Even in his Pindaric odes, in which he made the most 



THE POET YOUNG. 33 

violent effort against nature, lie is still neither more nor 
less than the Young of the " Last Day," emptied and 
swept of his genius, and possessed by seven demons of 
fustian and bad rhyme. Even here, his ^' Ercles' vein " 
alternates with his moral platitudes, and we have the 
perpetual text of the " Night Thoughts *." 

" Gold pleasure buys ; 

But pleasure dies, 
For soon the gross fruition cloys j 

Though raptures court, 

The sense is short ; 
But virtue kindles living joys; 

Joys felt alone ! 

Joys asked of none ! 
Which Time's and Fortune's arrows miss : 

Joys that subsist, 

Though fates resist, 
An unprecarious, endless bliss ! 

Unhappy they ! 
And falsely gay ! 
Who bask forever in success ; 
A constant feast 
Quite p^l|s the taste, 
And long enjoyment is distress." 

In the "Last Day," again, which is the earliest thing 
he wrote, we have~^ "to^atiticipation of all his greatest 
faults and merits. Conspicuous among the faults is 
that attempt to exalt our conceptions of Deity by vul- 
gar images and comparisons, which is so offensive in the 
later " Night Thoughts." In a burst of prayer and 
homage to God, called forth by the contemplation of 
Christ coming to judgment, he asks. Who brings the 
change of the seasons? and answers: 
4 2* 



34r WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS I 

"Not the great Ottoman, or greater Czar; 



?» 



Not Europe's arbitress of peace and war ! 

Conceive the soul, in its most solemn moments, assur- 
ing God that it does not place His power below that of 
Louis Napoleon or Queen Victoria ! 

But in the midst of uneasy rhymes, inappropriate im- 
agery, vaulting sublimity that o'erleaps itself, and vulgar 
emotions, we have in this poem an occasional flash of 
genius, a touch of simple grandeur, which promises as 
much as Young ever achieved. Describing the on- 
coming of the dissolution of all things, he says : 

" No sun in radiant glory shines on high ; 
No light hut from the terrors of the sky." 

And again, speaking of great armies : 

" Whose rear lay wrapt in night, while breaking dawn 
Eous'd the broad front, and call'd the battle on." 

And this wail of the lost soul is fine : 

"And this for sin? 
Could I oifend if I had never been ? 
But still increas'd the senseless, happy mass, 
Flow'd in the stream, or shivered in the grass? 
Father of mercies ! why from silent earth 
Didst Thou awake and curse me into birth ? 
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, 
And make a thankless present of thy light ? 
Push into being a reverse of Thee, 
And animate a clod with misery f" 

But it is seldom in Young's rhymed poems that tiie 
effect of a felicitous thought or image is not counter- 
acted by our sense of the constraint he suffered from 
the necessities of rhyme, that " Gothic demon," as he 



THE POET YOUNG. 35 

afterwards called it, " which, modern poetry tasting, be- 
came mortal." In relation to his own power, no one 
will question the truth of his dictum, that " blank verse 
is verse unfallen, uncurst ; verse reclaimed, re-enthroned 
in the true language of the gods ; who never thundered 
nor suffered their Homer to thunder in rhyme." His 
want of mastery in rh^^me is especially a drawback on 
the effect of his Satires ; for epigrams and witticisms 
are peculiarly susceptible to the intrusion of a super- 
fluous word, or to an inversion which implies constraint. 
Here, even more than elsewhere, the art tliat conceals 
art is an absolute requisite, and to have a witticism pre- 
sented to us in limping or cumbrous rhythm is as coun- 
teractive to any electrifying effect as to see the tenta- 
tive grimaces by which a comedian prepares a grotesque 
countenance. We discern the process, instead of being 
startled by the result. 

This is one reason why the Satires, read seriatim-, have 
a flatness to us, which, when we afterwards read picked 
passages, we are inclined to disbelieve in, and to attribute 
to some deficiency in our own mood. But there are 
deeper reasons for that dissatisfaction. Young is not a 
satirist of a high order. His satire has neither the ter- 
rible vigor, the lacerating energy, of genuine indigna- 
tion, nor the humor which owns loving fellowship with 
the poor human nature it laughs at; nor yet the per- 
sonal bitterness which, as in Pope's characters of Sporus 
and Atticus, insures those living touches by virtue of 
which the'individual and particular in art becomes the 
universal and immortal. Young could never describe 
a real complex human being; but what he could do 
M'ith eminent success was to describe with neat and 



n > 



o) WORLDLINESS AND OTIIER-WOELDLINESS ! 

finished point obvious types of manners rather than of 
character, to write cold and clever epigrams on personi- 
fied vices and absurdities. There is no more emotion 
in his satire than if he were turning witty verses on a 
waxen image of Cupid, or a lady's glove. He has none 
of those felicitous epithets, none of those pregnant lines, 
l)y which Pope's Satires have enriched the ordinary 
speech of educated men. Young's wit will be found in 
almost every instance to consist in that antithetic com- 
bination of ideas which, of all the forms of wit, is most 
within reach of clever effort. In his gravest arguments, 
as well as in his lightest satire, one might imagine that 
he had set himself to work out the problem how much 
antithesis might be got out of a given subject. And 
there he completely succeeds. His neatest portraits are 
all wrought on this plan. Narcissus, for example, who — 

^' Omits no duty ; nor cau Envy say 
He miss'd, these many years, the Church or Play : 
He makes no noise in Parliament, 'tis true; 
But pays his debts and visit when 'tis due; 
His character and gloves are ever clean. 
And then he can out-bow the bowing Dean; 
A smile eternal on his lip he wears, 
Which equally the wise and worthless shares; 
In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief, 
Patient of idleness beyond belief, 
Most charitably lends the town his face 
For ornament in every public phxce ; 
As sure as cards he to th' assembly comes. 
And is the furniture of drawing-rooms: 
When Ombre calls, his hand and heart are free, 
And, joined to two, he fails not — to make threes 
Narcissus is the glory of his race ; 
For who does nothing with a better grace ? 



THE POET YOUNG. 6l 

To deck my list by nature were designed 

Such shining expletives of human kind, 

Who want, while through blank life they dream along, 

Sense to be right and passion to be wrong." 

It is but seldom that we find a touch of that easy sly- 
ness which gives an additional zest to surprise ; but here 
is an instance : 

" See Tityrus, with merriment possest, 
Is burst with laughter ere he hears the jest. 
What need he stay ? for when the joke is o'er, 
His teeth will be no whiter than before." 

Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with a 
psychological mistake as the basis of his satire, attribut- 
ing all forms of folly to one passion — the love of fame, 
or vanity — a much grosser mistake, indeed, than Pope's 
exaggeration of the extent to which the " ruling pas- 
sion" determines conduct in the individual. Not that 
Young is consistent in his mistake. He sometimes im- 
plies no more than what is the truth — that the love of 
fame is the cause, not of all follies, but of many. 

Young's satires on women are superior to Pope's, 
which is only saying that they are superior to Pope's 
greatest failure. We can more frequently pick out a 
couplet as successful than an entire sketch. Of the too- 
emphatic Syren a, he says : 

" Her judgment just, her sentence is too strong ; 
Because she's right, she's ever in the wrong." 

Of the diplomatic Julia : 

" For lier own breakfast she'll project a scheme, 
Nor take her tea without a stratagem." 



38 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- W0RLDLINE8S '. 

Of Ljce, the old painted coquette : 

" In vain the cock has summoned sprites away ; 
She walks at noon and blasts the bloom of day." 

Of the njmph who, " gratis, clears religious mysteries :" 

" 'Tis hard, too, she who makes no use but chat 
Of her religion, should be barr'd in that." 

The description of the literary helle^ Daphne, well 
prefaces that of Stella, admired by Johnson : 

''With legs toss'd high, on her sophee she sits, 
Vouchsafing audience to contending wits : 
Of each performance she's the final test ; 
One act read o'er, she prophesies the rest ; 
And then, pronounciug with decisive air, 
Fully conviuces all the town — she^s fair. 
Had lovely Daphne Hecatessa's face, 
How would her elegance of taste decrease ! 
Some ladies' judgment in their features lies. 
And all their genius sparkles in their eyes. 
But hold, she cries, lampooner ! have a care : 
Must I want common-sense because I'm fair? 
O no; see Stella: her eyes shine as bright 
As if her tongue was never in the right ; 
And yet what real learning, judgment, fire! 
She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire. 
How then (if malice ruled not all the fair) 
Could Daphne puhlish, and could she forhear f" 

After all, when we have gone through Young's seven 
Satires, we seem to have made bat an indifferent meal. 
They are a sort of fricassee, with little solid meat in 
them, and yet the flavor is not always piquant. It is 
curious to find him, when he pauses a moment from his 
satiric sketching, recurring to his old platitudes: 



THE POET YOUNG. 39 

"Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine? 
Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine ? 
Wisdom to gold prefer ;" — 

platitudes which he seems inevitably to fall into, for 
the same reason that some men are constantly asserting 
their contempt for criticism — because he felt the oppo- 
site so keenly. 

The outburst of genius in the earlier books of the 
"Night Thoughts" is the more remarkable, that in the 
interval between them and the Satires he had produced 
nothing but his Pindaric odes, in which he fell far be- 
low the level of his previous works. Two sources of 
this sudden strength were the freedom of blank verse 
and the presence of a genuine emotion. Most persons, 
in speaking of the "Night Thoughts," have in their 
minds only the two or three first Nights, the majority 
of readers rarely getting beyond these, unless, as Wilson 
says, they " have but few books, are poor, and live in 
the country." And in these earlier Nights there is 
enough genuine sublimity and genuine sadness to bribe 
us into too favorable a judgment of them as a whole. 
Young had only a very few things to say or sing — such 
as that life is vain, that death is imminent, that man is 
immortal, that virtue is wisdom, that friendship is sweet, 
and that the source of virtue is the contemplation of 
death and immortality — and even in his two first Nights 
he had said almost all he had to say in his finest man- 
ner. Through these first outpourings of "complaint" 
we feel that the poet is really sad, that the bird is sing- 
ing over a rifled nest, and we bear with his morbid pict- 
ure of the world and of life, as the Job-like lament of a 
man whom " the hand of God hath touched." Death 



40 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS : 

has carried away his best-beloved, and that " silent land " 
whither they are gone has more reality for the desolate 
one than this world which is empty of their love: 

" This is the desert, this the solitude ; 
How populous, how vital is the grave!" 

Joy died with the loved one : 

"The disenchanted earth 
Lost all her lustre. Where her glitt'ring towers ? 
Her golden mountains, where ? All darken'd down 
To naked waste ; a dreary vale of tears : 
Tlie great magiciari's dead /" 

Under the pang of parting, it seems to the bereaved 
man as if love were only a nerve to suffer with, and he 
sickens at the thought of every joy of which he must 
one day say, " it was.^'* In its unreasoning anguish, the 
soul rushes to the idea of perpetuity as the one element 
of bliss : 

" O ye blest scenes of permanent delight ! 
Could ye, so rich in rapture, fear an end — 
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy, 
And quite unparadise the realms of light." 

In a man under the immediate pressure of a great 
sorrow, we tolerate morbid exaggerations ; we are pre- 
pared to see him turn away a weary eye from sunlight 
and flowers and sweet human faces, as if this rich and 
glorious life had no significance but as a preliminary of 
death ; we do not criticise his views, we compassionate 
his feelings. And so it is with Young in tliese earlier 
Nights. There is ah'eady some artificiality even in his 
grief, and feeling often slides into rhetoric, but through 



THE POET YOUNG. 41 

it all we are thrilled with the unmistakable cry of pain, 
which makes us tolerant of egoism and hyperbole : 

" In every varied posture, place, and hour, 
How w'idow'd ev'ry thought of ev'ry joy ! 
Thought, busy thought ! too busy for my peace? 
Through the dark postern of time long elapsed 
Led softly, by the stillness of the night — 
Led like a murderer (and such it proves!) 
Strays (wretched rover!) o'er the pleasing past — 
In quest of wretchedness, perversely strays ; 
And finds all desert now ; and meets the ghosts 
Of my departed joys." 

But when he becomes didactic, rather than complain- 
ing — when he ceases to sing his sorrows, and begins to 
insist on his opinions — when that distaste for life which 
we pity as a transient feeling is thrust upon us as a the- 
ory, we become perfectly cool and critical, and are not 
in the least inclined to be indulgent to false views and 
selfish sentiments. 

Seeing that we are about to be severe on Young's 
failings and failures^ we ought, if a reviewer's space 
were elastic, to dwell also on his merits — on the start- 
ling vigor of his imagery, on the occasional grandeur of 
his thought, on the piquant force of that grave satire 
into which his meditations continually run. Bur, since 
our " limits " are rigorous, we must content ourselves 
with the less agreeable half of the critic's duty ; and we 
may the rather do so, because it would be difficult to 
say anything new of Young in the way of a^'/miratioDj 
while we think there are many salutary le??ons remain* 
ing to be drawn from his faults. 

One of the most striking characteristics of Young is 
4* 



42 WOELDLINESS AND OTHER- W0RLDLINES9 '. 

his radical insincerity as a jpoetic artist. This, added 
to the thin and artificial texture of his wit, is the true 
explanation of the paradox, that a poet who is often 
inopportunely witty has the opposite vice of bombastic 
absurdity. The source of all grandiloquence is the 
want of taking for a criterion the true qualities of the 
object described or the emotion expressed. The gran- 
diloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or 
what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his 
audience; hence he may float away into utter inanity 
without meeting any criterion to arrest him. Here lies 
the distinction between grandiloquence and genuine 
fancy or bold imaginativeness. The fantastic or the 
boldly imaginative poet may be as sincere as the most 
realistic; he is true to his own sensibilities or inward 
vision, and in his wildest flights he never breaks loose 
from his criterion — the truth of his own mental state. 
Now, this disruption of language from genuine thought 
and feeling is w^hat we are constantly detecting in 
Young; and his insincerity is the more likely to be- 
tray him into absurdity, because he habitually treats of 
abstractions, and not of concrete objects or specific 
emotions. He descants perpetually on virtue, religion, 
'' the good man," life, death, immortality, eternity — 
subjects which are apt to give a factitious grandeur to 
empty worldliness. When a poet floats in the empy- 
rean, and only takes a bird's-eye view of the earth, some 
people accept the mere fact of his soaring for sublim- 
ity, and mistake his dim vision of earth for proximity 
to heaven. Thus : 

" His hand tLe good man fixes on the skies, 
And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl," 



THE POET YOUNG. 43 

'may perhaps pass for sublime with some readers. But 
pause a moment to realize the image, and the mon- 
strous absurdity of a man's grasping the skies, and hang- 
ing habitually suspended there, while he contemptuously 
bids the earth roll, warns you that no genuine feeling 
could have suggested so unnatural a conception. 

Examples of such vicious imagery, resulting from in- 
sincerity, may be found, perhaps, in almost every page 
of the " Night Thoughts." But simple assertions or 
aspirations, undisguised by imagery, are often equally 
false. No writer whose rhetoric was checked by the 
slightest truthful intentions could have said : 

" An eye of awe and wonder let me roll, 
And roll forever." 

Abstracting the more poetical associations with the eye, 
this is hardly less absurd than if he had wished to stand 
forever with his mouth open. 
'Again : 

" Far beneath 
A soul immortal is a mortal joy." 

Happily for human nature, we are sure no man really 
believes that. Which of us has the impiety not to feel 
that our souls are only too narrow for the joy of look- 
ing into the trusting eyes of our children, of reposing 
on the love of a husband or wife — nay, of listening to 
the divine voice of music, or watching the calm bright- 
ness of autumn afternoons? But Young could utter 
this falsity without detecting it, because, when he spoke 
of " mortal joys," he rarely had in his mind any object 
to which he could attach sacredness. He was thinking 
of bishoprics and benefices, of smiling monarchs, pat- 



4:4 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : 

ronizing prime-ministers, and a " much indebted muse." 
Of anything between these and eternal bliss he was 
but rarely and moderately conscious. Often, indeed, he 
sinks very much below even the bishopric, and seems to 
have no notion of earthly pleasure but such as breathes 
gaslight and the fumes of wine. His picture of life is 
precisely such as you would expect from a man who 
lias risen from his bed at two o'clock in the afternoon 
with a headache, and a dim remembrance that he has 
added to his " debts of honor :" 

" What wretched repetition cloys us here ! 
What periodic potions for the sick, 
Distemper'd bodies, and distemper'd minds !" 

And then he flies off to his usual antithesis : 

" In an eternity what scenes shall strike ! 
Adventures thicken, novelties surprise !" 

"Earth" means lords and levees, duchesses and Deli- 
lahs, South-Sea dreams and illegal percentage ; and the 
only things distinctly preferable to these are, eternity 
and the stars. Deprive Young of this antithesis, and 
more than half his eloquence would be shrivelled up. 
Place him on a breezy common, where the furze is in 
its golden bloom, where children are playing, and horses 
are standing in the sunshine with fondling necks, and 
he would have nothing to say. Here are neither depths 
of guilt nor heights of glory ; and we doubt whether, in 
such a scene, he would be able to pay his usual compli- 
ment to the Creator : 

" Where'er I turn, what claim on all applause !" 
It is true that he sometimes — not often — speaks of 



THE POET YOUNG. 45 

virtue as capable of sweetening life, as well as of taking 
the sting from death and winning heaven ; and, lest we 
should be guilty of any unfairness to him, we will quote 
the two passages which convey this sentiment the most 
explicitl3^ In the one, he gives Lorenzo this excellent 
recipe for obtaining cheerfulness : 

" Go, fix some weighty truth ; 
Chain down some ijassion ; do some generous good ; 
Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile ; 
Correct thy friend ; befriend thy greatest foe ; 
Or, with warm heart, and confidence divine, 
Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who made thee." 

The other passage is vague, but beautiful, and its mu- 
sic has murmured in our minds for many years : 

" The cuckoo seasons sing 
The same dull note to such as nothing prize 
But what those seasons from the teeming earth 
To doting sense indulge. But nobler minds, 
Which relish fruit unripen'd by the sun, 
Make their days various ; various as the dyes 
On the dove's neck, which wanton in his rays. 
On minds of dove-like innocence possess'd. 
On lighten'd minds that bask in Virtue's beams, 
Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves 
In that for which they long, for which they live. 
Their glorious efforts, wing'd with heavenly hopes, 
Each rising morning sees still higher rise ; 
Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents 
To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame; 
While Nature's circle, like a chariot wheel, 
Rolling beneath their elevated aims, 
Makes their fair prospect fairer every hour; 
Advancing virtue in a line to bliss." 

Even here, where he is in his most a^niable mood, 



46 WOELDLINESS AND OTIIEE-WORLDLINESS I 

you see at what a telescopic distance be stands from 
mother Earth and simple human joys — "Nature's cir- 
cle rolls beneath." Indeed, we remember no mind in 
poetic literature that seems to have absorbed less of the 
beauty and the healthy breath of the common land- 
scape than Young's. His images, often grand and 
finely presented — witness that sublimely sudden leap of 
thought, 

" Embryos we must be till we burst the shell, 
Yo7i ambient azure shell, and spring to life " — 

lie almost entirely within that circle of observation 
which would be familiar to a man who lived in town, 
hung about the theatres, read the newspaper, and went 
home often by moon and star light. There is no natural 
object nearer than the moon that seems to have any 
strong attachment for him, and even to the moon he 
chiefly appeals for patronage, and "pays his court" to 
her. It is reckoned among the many deficiencies of 
Lorenzo, that he "never asked the moon one question" 
— an omission which Young thinks eminently unbe- 
coming a rational being. He describes nothing so well 
as a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail 
over nothing more familiar than the day of judgment 
and an imaginary journey among the stars. Once on 
Saturn's ring, he feels at home, and his language be- 
comes quite easy : 

"What behold I now? 
A wilderness of wonders burning round, 
Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres j 
Perhaps the villas of descending god» /" 

It is like a sudden relief from a strained posture 
when, in the "Night Thoughts," we come on any allu> 



THE POET YOUNG. 47 

eion that carries iis to the lanes, woods, or fields. Such 
allusions are amazingly rare, and we could almost count 
them on a single hand. That we may do him no injus- 
tice, we will quote the three best : 

" Like blossomed trees overturned by vernal storm 

Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay." 
* # # * * 

" In tlie same brook none ever bathed him twice : 

To the same life none ever twice awoke. 

We call the brook the same — the same we think 

Our life, though still more rapid in its flow ; 

Nor mark the much irrevocably lapsed, 

And mingled with the sea." 

***** 
"The crown of manhood is a winter joy; 

An evergreen that stands the northern blast, 

And blossoms in the rigor of our fate." 

The adherence to abstractions, or to the personifica- 
tion of abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the 
want of genuine emotion. He sees Virtue sitting on a 
mount serene, far above the mists and storms of earth : 
he sees Religion coming down from the skies, with this 
world in her left hand and the other world in her right ; 
but we never find him dwelling on virtue or religion as 
it really exists — in the emotions of a man dressed in an 
ordinary coat, and seated by his fireside of an evening, 
with his hand resting on the head of his little daughter; 
in courageous effort for unselfish ends, in the internal 
triumph of justice and pity over personal resentment, 
in all the sublime self-renunciation and sweet charities 
which are found in the details of ordinary life. Now, 
emotion links itself with particulars, and only in a faint 
and secondary manner with abstractions. An crater 



48 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS .' 

may discourse very eloquently on injustice in general, 
and leave his audience cold ; but let him state a special 
case of oppression, and every heart will throb. The 
most untheoretic persons are aware of this relation be- 
tween true emotion and particular facts, as opposed to 
general terms, and implicitly recognize it in the repul- 
sion they feel towards any one who professes strong 
feeling about abstractions — in the interjectional "hum- 
bug!" which immediately rises to their lips. 

If we except the passages in Philander, l^arcissa, and 
Lucia, there is hardly a trace of human sympathy, of 
seif-forgetfulness, in the joy or sorrow of a fellow-being, 
throughout this long poem, which professes to treat the 
various phases of man's destiny. And even in the Nar- 
cissa Night, Young repels us by the low moral tone of 
his exaggerated lament. This married step-daughter 
died at Lyons, and, being a Protestant, was denied bur- 
ial, so that her friends had to bury her in secret— one of 
the many miserable results of superstition, but not a fact 
to throw an educated, still less a Christian, man into a 
fury of hatred and vengeance in contemplating it after 
the lapse of five years. Young, however, takes great 
pains to simulate a bad feeling : 

" Of grief 
And iudignation rival bursts I poiir'd, 
Half execration mingled with my pray'r; 
Kindled at mau, while I his God ador'd ; 
Sore grudg'd the savage laud her sacred dust ; 
Stamp'd the cursed soil ; and with humanity 
{Denied Narcissa) ivish^d them all a grave." 

The odiously bad taste of this last clause makes us hope 
that it is simply a platitude, and not intended as a wit- 



THE POET YOUNG. 4i> 

ticisin, until be removes the possibility of this favorable 
doubt by immediately asking, " Flows my resentment 
into guilt f 

When, by an after-thought, he attempts something like 
sympathy, he only betrays more clearly his want of it. 
Thus, in the first Night, when he turns from his private 
griefs to depict earth as a hideous abode of misery for 
all mankind, and asks, 

"What then am I, who sorrow for myself?" 

he falls at once into calculating the benefit of sorrowing 
for others : 

" More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts ; 
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang. 
Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give 
Swollen thought a second channel." 

This remarkable negation of sympathy is in perfect 
consistency with Young's theory of ethics : 

" Virtue is a crime, 
A crime to reason, if it costs us pain 
Unpaid." 

If there is no immortality for man, 

" Sense ! take the rein ; blind Passion, drive us on ; 
And Iguorauce ! befriend us on our way. . . . 
Yes ; give the pulse full empire ; live the Brute, 
Since as the brute we die. The sum of man, 
Of godlike man, to revel and to rot." 

" If this life's gain invites him to the deed, 
Why not his country sold, his father slain ?" 

" Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdain'd, 
Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools, 
And think a turf or tombstone covers all." 
3 



60 WORLDLINESS AND OTHEE-WOELDLINESS : 

» * * * # 

" Die for tliy country; thou romantic fool I 
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink.'^ 
->#*■»» 

** As in the dying parent dies the child, 
Virtue with Immortality expires. 
Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, 
Whatever Ms hoast, Jias told me he's a Jcnave. 
His duty His to love himself alone, 
Nor care though mankind jperish, if he smiles." 

We can imagine the man who " denies his soul immor- 
tal " replying, " It is quite possible that you would be a 
knave, and love yourself alone, if it were not for your 
belief in immortality ; but you are not to force upon 
me what would result from your own utter want of 
moral emotion. I am just and honest, not because I 
expect to live in another world, but because, having felt 
the pain of injustice and dishonesty towards myself, I 
have a fellow-feeling with other men, who would suf- 
fer the same pain if I were unjust or dishonest tow- 
ards them. Why should I give my neighbor short 
weight in this world, because there is not another world 
in which I should have nothing to weigh out to him ? 
I am honest, because I don't like to inflict evil on others 
in this life, not because I'm afraid of evil to myself in 
another. The fact is, I do not love myself alone, what- 
ever logical necessity there may be for that conclusion 
in your mind. I have a tender love for my wife and 
children and friends, and through that love I sympa- 
thize with like affections in other men. It is a pang to 
me to witness the suflPering of a fellow-being, and I feel 
his suffering the more acutely because he is mortal — be' 



THE POET YOUNG. 61 

cause his life is so short, and I would have it, if possible, 
filled with happiness and not misery. Through my 
union and fellowship with the men and women I have 
seen, I feel a like, though a fainter, sympathy with those 
I have not seen ; and I am able so to live in imagina- 
tion with the generations to come, that their good is 
not alien to me, and is a stimulus to me to labor for 
ends which may not benefit myself, but will benefit 
them. It is possible that you might prefer to ' live the 
brute,' to sell your country, or to slay your father, if 
you were not afraid of some disagreeable consequences 
from the criminal laws of another world ; but even if 
I could conceive no motive but my own worldly in- 
terest or the gratification of my animal desires, I have 
not observed that beastliness, treachery, and parricide 
are the direct way to happiness and comfort on 
earth." 

Thus far the man who "denies himself immortal" 
might give a warrantable reply to Young's assumption 
of peculiar loftiness in maintaining that " virtue with 
immortality expires." We may admit, indeed, that if 
the better part of virtue consists, as Young appears to 
think, in contempt for mortal joys, in " meditation of 
our own decease," and in "applause" of God in the 
style of a congratulatory address to her majesty — all 
which has small relation to the well-being of mankind 
on this earth — the motive to it must be gathered from 
something that lies quite outside the sphere of human 
sympathy. But, for certain other elements of virtue, 
which are of more obvious importance to plain people — 
a delicate sense of our neighbor's rights, an active par- 
ticipation in the joys and sorrows of our fellow-men, a 



53 WOELDLINESS AND OTHEE-WORLDLINESS *. 

inagnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for 
ourselves when it is the condition of rescue for others — ■ 
in a word, the widening and strengthening of our sym- 
pathetic nature — it is surely of some moment to con- 
tend that they have no more direct dependence on the 
belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in 
the lungs on the plurality of w^orlds. Nay, it is con- 
ceivable that in some minds the deep pathos lying in 
the thought of human mortality — that we are here for a 
little while and then vanish away, that this earthly life 
is all that is given to our loved ones and to our many 
suffering fellow-men, lies nearer the fountains of moral 
emotion than the conception of extended existence. 
And surely it ought to be a w^elcome fact, if the thought 
of mortality^ as well as of immortality, be favorable to 
virtue. We can imagine that the proprietors of a pat- 
ent water-supply may have a dread of common springs; 
but for those who only share the general need there 
cannot be too gi'eat a security against a lack of fresh 
water, or of pure morality. It should be matter of un- 
mixed rejoicing if this latter necessary of healthful life 
has its evolution insured in the interaction of human 
souls as certainly as the evolution of science or of art, 
with which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into 
them with undefinable limits. 

To return to Young. We can often detect a man's 
deficiencies in what he admires more clearly than in 
what he contemns, in the sentiments he presents as laud- 
able rather than in those he decries. And in Young's 
notion of what is lofty he casts a shadow by which we 
can measure him without further trouble. For exam« 
pie, in arguing for human immortality, he says: 



THE POET YOUNG. 53 

" First, what is true ambition ? The pursuit 
Of glory nothing less than man can share. 

* * » * # 

The Visible and Present are for brutes, 
A slender portion, and a narrow bound ! 
These Reason, with an energy di\ine 
O'erleaps, aud claims the Future and Unseen; 
The vast Unseen, the Future fathomless ! 
When the great soul buoys np to this high point, 
Leaving gross Nature's sediments below, 
Then, and then only, Adam's offspring quits 
The sage and hero of the fields and woods, 
• Asserts his rank, and rises into man." 

So, then, if it were certified that, as some benevolent 
minds have tried to infer, our dumb fellow-creatures 
would share a future existence, in which it is to be 
hoped we should neither beat, starve, nor maim them, 
our ambition for a future life would cease to be 
"loftj"! This is a notion of loftiness which may 
pai-r off with Dr. Whewell's celebrated observation, that 
Bentham's moral theory is low, because it includes 
justice and mercy to brutes. 

But, for a reflection of Young's moral personality on 
a colossal scale, we must turn to those passages where 
his rhetoric is at its utmost stretch of inflation — where 
he addresses the Deity, discourses of the Divine opera- 
tions, or describes the last judgment. As a compound 
of vulgar pomp, crawling adulation, and hard selfish- 
ness, presented under the guise of piety, there are few 
tilings in literature to surpass the ninth :N'ight, entitled 
" Consolation," especially in the pages where he de- 
scribes the last judgment — a subject to which, with 
naive self-betrayal, he applies phraseology favored by 



54 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS ! 

the exuberant penny-a-liner. Thus, when God de- 
scends, and the groans of hell are opposed by "shouts 
of joy," much as cheers and groans contend at a public 
meeting where the resolutions are not passed unani- 
mously, the poet completes his climax in this way : 

" Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise, 
The charmed spectators tliunder their applause." 

In the same taste, he sings : 

" Eternity, the various sentence past, 
Assigns the sever'd throng distinct abodes, 
Sulphureous or ambrosial." 

Exquisite delicacy of indication ! He is too nice to be 
specific as to the interior of the "sulphureous" abode; 
but when once half the human race are shut up there, 
hear how he enjoys turning the key on them ! 

"What ensues? 
The deed predominant, the deed of deeds ! 
Which makes a hell of hell, a heaven of heaven ! 
The goddess, with determin'd aspect, turns 
Her adamantine key's enormous size 
Through Destiny's inextricable wards, 
Deep driving every holt on both their fates. 
Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven, 
Dowu, down she hurls it through the dark profound, 
Ten thousand, thousand fathom ; there to rust 
And ne'er unlock her resolution more. 
The deep resounds ; and Hell, through all her glooms, 
Returns, in groans, the melancholy roar." 

This is one of the blessings for which Dr. Young 
thanks God " most " : 

" For all I bless Thee, most, for the severe ; 
Her death — my own at hand — the fiery gulf, 
That flaming hound of wrath omnipotent! 
It thunders ; hut it thunders to preserve ; 



THE POET YOUNG. 55 

, , o . . . its wholesome dread 

Averts the dreaded paiu ; its hideous groans 

Join Heaven'' s sweet Hallelujahs in thy praise^ 

Great Source of good alone ! How kind in all! 

In vengeance kind ! Pain, Death, Gehenna, save "... 

i. e., save me^ Dr. Young, who, in return for that favor, 
promise to give my divine patron the monopoly of that 
exuberance in laudatory epithet of which specimens 
may be seen at any moment in a large number of dedi- 
cations and odes to kings, queens, prime-ministers, and 
other persons of distinction. That, in Young's con- 
ception, is what God delights in. His crowning aim in 
the ^'' drama" of the ages is to vindicate his own re- 
nown. The God of the ^* Night Thoughts" is simply 
Young himself " writ large " — a didactic poet, who 
" lectures " mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of 
mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and 
heaven ; and expects the tribute of inexhaustible " ap- 
plause." Young has no conception of religion as any- 
thing else than egoism turned heavenward ; and he 
does not merely imply this, he insists on it. Religion, 
he tells us, in argumentative passages too long to quote, 
is " ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain," directed 
towards the joys of the future life instead of the pres- 
ent. And his ethics correspond to his religion. He 
vacillates, indeed, in his ethical theory, and shifts his 
position in order to suit his immediate purpose in argu- 
ment; but he never changes his level so as to see be- 
yond the horizon of mere selfishness. Sometimes he 
insists, as we have seen, that the belief in a future life 
is the only basis of morality ; but elsewhere he tells us — 

" In self-applause is virtue's golden prize." 



50 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS : 

Virtue, with Young, must always squint — must 
never look straight towards the immediate object of its 
emotion and effort. Thus, if a man risks perishing in 
the snow himself rather than forsake a weaker comrade, 
he must either do this because his hopes and fears are 
directed to another world, or because he desires to ap- 
plaud himself afterwards ! Young, if we may believe 
him, would despise the action as folly unless it had 
these motives. Let us hope he was not so bad as he 
pretended to be! The tides of the divine life in man 
move under the thickest ice of theory. 

Another indication of Young's deficiency in moral. 
i. e., in sympathetic emotion, is his unintermitting habit 
of pedagogic moralizing. On its theoretic and percep- 
tive side, Morality touches Science ; on its emotional 
side, poetic Art. Now, the products of poetic Art are 
great in proportion as they result from the immediate 
prompting of innate power, and not from labored obe- 
dience to a theory or rule ; and the presence of genius 
or innate prompting is directly opposed to the per- 
petual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty 
is imperious, and supersedes the reflection why it should 
act. In the same way, in proportion as morality is 
emotional, it will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic 
feeling and action, and not as the recognition of a rule. 
Love does not say, " I ought to love " — it loves. Pity 
does not say, "It is right to be pitiful" — it pities. 
Justice does not saj^, "I am bound to be just" — it feels 
justly. It is only where moral emotion is compara- 
tively weak that the contemplation of a rule or theory 
habitually mingles with its action ; and, in accordance 
with this, we think experience, both in literature and 



THE POET YOUNG. 57 

life, has shown that the minds which are predominant!)' 
didactic are deficient in sympathetic emotion. A man 
who is perpetually thinking in monitory apothegms, 
who has an unintermittent flux of rebuke, can have 
little energy left for simple feeling. And this is the 
case with Young. In his highest flights of contempla- 
tion, and his most wailing soliloquies, he interrupts him- 
self to fling an admonitory parenthesis at Lorenzo, or 
to hint that " folly's creed " is the reverse of his own. 
Before his thoughts can flow, he must fix his eye on an 
imaginary miscreant, who gives unlimited scope for 
lecturing, and recriminates just enough to keep the 
spring of admonition and argument going to the ex- 
tent of nine books. It is curious to see how this peda- 
gogic habit of mind runs through Young's contempla- 
tion of Nature. As the tendency to see our own sad- 
ness reflected in the external world has been called 
by Mr. Ruskin the "pathetic fallacy," so we may call 
Young's disposition to see a rebuke or a warning in 
every natural object the " pedagogic fallacy." To his 
mind, the heavens are "forever scolding as they 
shine ;" and the great function of the stars is to be a 
" lecture to mankind." The conception of the Deity 
as a didactic author is not merely an implicit point of 
view with him ; he works it out in elaborate imagery, 
and at length makes it the occasion of his most extraor- 
dinary achievement in the " art of sinking," by ex- 
claiming — a projpos, we need hardly say, of the noc- 
turnal heavens — 

" Diviue Instructor ! Thy first Tolurae this 
For man's perusal ! all in capitals !" 

It is this pedagogic tendency, this sermonizing atti^ 
5 3* 



58 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS .* 

tude of Young's mind, which produces the wearisome 
monotony of his pauses. After the first two or three 
Nights, he is rarely singing, rarely pouring forth any 
continuous melody inspired by the spontaneous flow of 
thought or feeling. He is rather occupied with argu- 
mentative insistance, with hammering in the proofs of 
his propositions by disconnected verses, which he puts 
down at intervals. The perpetual recurrence of the 
pause at the end of the line throughout long passages 
makes them as fatiguing to the ear as a monotonous 
chant, which consists of the endless repetition of one 
short musical phrase. For example: 

" Past hours, 
If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight, 
If folly bound our prospect by the grave, 
All feeling of futurity be numb'd. 
All godlike passion for eternals quench'd, 
All relish of realities expired ; 
Renounced all correspondence with the skies ; 
Our freedom chain'd ; quite wingless our desire ; 
In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar ; 
Prone to the centre ; crawling in the dust ; 
Dismouuted every great and glorious aim ; 
Enthralled every faculty divine, 
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world." 

How different from the easy, graceful melody of Cow- 
per's blank verse ! Indeed, it is hardly possible to 
criticise Young without being reminded at every step 
of the contrast presented to him by Cowper. And this 
contrast urges itself upon us the more from the fact that 
there is, to a certain extent, a parallelism between the 
"Night Thoughts" and the "Task." In both poems, 
the author achieves his greatest in virtue of the new 



THE POET YOUNG. 59 

freedom conferred by blank verse; both poems are 
professedly didactic, and mingle much satire with their 
graver meditations ; both poems are the productions of 
men whose estimate of this life was formed by the 
light of a belief in immortality, and who were in- 
tensely attached to Christianity. On some grounds, we 
might have anticipated a more morbid view of things 
from Cowper than from Young. Cowper's religion 
was dogmatically the more gloomy, for he was a Calvin- 
ist ; while Young was a " low " Arminian, believing 
th^t Christ died for all, and that the only obstacle to 
any man's salvation lay in his will, which he could 
change if he chose. There was deep and unusual sad- 
ness involved in Cowper's personal lot ; while Young, 
apart from his ambitious and greedy discontent, seems 
to have had no exceptional sorrow. 

Yet see how a lovely, sympathetic nature manifests 
itself in spite of creed and circumstance ! Where is the 
poem that surpasses the " Task " in the genuine love it 
breathes, at once towards inanimate and animate exist- 
ence — in truthfulness of perception and sincerity of 
presentation — in the calm gladness that springs from a 
delight in objects for their own sake, without self-refer- 
ence — in divine sympathy with the lowliest pleasures, 
with the most short-lived capacity for pain ? Here is 
no railing at the earth's " melancholy map," but the hap- 
piest lingering over her simplest scenes with all the 
fond minuteness of attention that belongs to love ; no 
pompous rhetoric about the inferiority of the " brutes," 
but a warm plea on their behalf against man's inconsid- 
erateness and cruelty, and a sense of enlarged happiness 
from their companionship in enjoyment ; no vague rant 



60 WOELDLINESS AND OTHEE-WORLDLINESS : 

about linman misery and human virtue, but that close 
and vivid presentation of particular sorrows and priva- 
tions, of particular deeds and misdeeds, which is the di- 
rect road to the emotions. How Cowper's exquisite 
mind falls with the mild warmth of morning sunlight 
on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every de- 
tail and investing every detail with beauty ! No object 
is too small to prompt his song — not the sooty film on 
the bars, or the spoutless teapot holding a bit of mign- 
onette that serves to cheer the dingy town-lodging 
with a ''hint that ^N^ature lives;" and yet his song is 
never trivial, for he is alive to small objects, not because 
his mind is narrow, but because his glance is clear and 
his heart is large. Instead of trying to edify us by 
supercilious allusions to the " brutes " and the " stalls," 
he interests us in that tragedy of the hen-roost when 
the thief has wrenched the door — 

^' Where Chanticleer amidst his harem sleeps 
In unsiispeeting pomp ;" 

in the patient cattle, that on the winter's morning 

" Mourn in corners where the fence 
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep 
In unrecumhent sadness ;" 

in the little squirrel, that, surprised by him in his wood- 
land walk, 

" At once, swift as a bird, 

Ascends the neighboring beech ; there whisks his brush. 

And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud, 

With all the prettiuess of feigned alarm 

And anger insignificantly fierce." 

And then he passes into reflection, not with curt apo- 



THE POET YOUNG. CI 

thegm and snappish reproof, but with that melodious 
flow of utterance which belongs to thought when it is 
carried in a stream of feeling : 

" The lieart is hard in nature, and unfit 
For human fellowship, as being void 
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike 
To love and friendship both, that is not pleased 
With sight of animals enjoying life, 
Nor feels their happiness augment his own." 

His large and tender heart embraces the most everj-day 
forms of human life ; the carter driving his team through 
the' wintry storm ; the cottager's wife who, painfully 
nursing the embers on her hearth, while her infants 
" sit cowering o'er the sparks," 

" Retires, content to quake, so they be warmed ;" 
or the villager, with her little ones, going out to pick 

" A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook ;" 

and he compels our colder natures to follow his in its 
manifold sympathies, not by exhortations, not by telling 
ns to meditate at midnight, to "indulge" the thought 
of death, or to ask ourselves how we shall "weather 
an eternal night," hut hy ^presenting to us the object of 
his compassion truthfully and lovingly. And when he 
handles greater themes, when he takes a wider survey, 
and considers the men or the deeds which have a direct 
influence on the welfare of communities and nations, 
there is the same unselfish warmth of feeling, the same 
scrupulous truthfulness. He is never vague in his re- 
monstrance or his satire; but puts his finger on some 
particular vice or folly, which excites his indignation or 
^' dissolves his heart in pity," because of some specific 
injury it does to his fellow-man or to a sacred cause. 



62 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOELDLINESS I 

And when he is asked why he interests himself about 
the sorrows and wrongs of others, hear what is the rea- 
son he gives. Not, like Young, that the movements of 
the planets show a mutual dependence, and that 

" Tlius man Ms sovereign duty learns in this 
Material picture of benevolence ;" — 

or that — 

"More generous sorrow while it sinks, exalts, 
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang." 

"What is Cowper's answer, when he imagines some 
"sage, erudite, profound," asking him, "What's the 
world to you ?" — 

" Much. I was horn of woman, and drew milk 
As sweet as charity from human breasts. 
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, 
And exercise all functions of a man. 
How then should I and any man that lives 
Be strangers to each other ?" 

Young is astonished that men can make war on each 

other — that any one can " seize his brother's throat," 

while 

" The Planets cry, ' Forbear.' " 

Cowper weeps because — 

" There is no flesh iu man's obdurate heart : 
It does not feel for man." 

Young applauds Grod as a monarch with an empire and 
a court quite superior to the English, or as an author 
who produces " volumes for man's perusal." Cowper 
sees his Father's love in all the gentle pleasures of the 
home fireside, in the charms even of the wintry land- 
scape, and thinks — 



THE POET YOUNG. 63 

*' Happy who walks with him! whom what he finds 
Of flavor or of scent iii fruit or flower, 
Or what he views of beautiful or grand 
In nature, from the broad mtijestic oak 
To the green blade that twiukles in the sun 
Prompts ivith remenibrance of a present God." 

To conclude, for we must arrest ourselves in a con- 
trast that would lead us beyond our bounds : Young 
flies for his utmost consolation to the day of judgment, 
when 

" Final Ruin fiercely drives 
Her ploughshare o'er Creation ;" 

when earth, stars, and suns are swept aside — 

"And now, all dross removed, Heaven's own pure day 
Full on the confines of onr ether, flames : 
While (dreadful contrast !) far (how far !) beneath, 
Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas. 
And storms sulphureous ; her voracious jaws 
Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey," — 

Dr. Young, and siraihir "ornaments of religion and 
virtue," passing, of course, with grateful "applause" 
into the upper region. Cowper finds his highest in- 
spiration in the Millennium — in the restoration of this 
our beloved home of earth to perfect holiness and bliss, 
when the Supreme 

" Shall visit earth in mercy ; shall descend 
Propitious in His chariot paved with love ; 
And what His storms have blasted and defaced 
For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair." 

And into what delicious melody his song flows at the 
thought of that blessedness to be enjoyed by future gen- 
erations on earth ! — 



64 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- W0RLDLINES9, 

" The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks 
Shout to each other, and the mountain-tops 
From distant mountains catch the flying joy 5 
Till, nation after nation taught the strain, 
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round !" 

The sura of onr comparison is this : In Young we 
have the type of that deficient human sympathy, that 
impiety towards the present and the visible, which flies 
for its motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the re- 
mote, the vague, and the unknown ; in Cowper we have 
the type of that genuine love which cherishes things in 
proportion to their nearness, and feels its reverence 
grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. 



GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 

" IN^OTHiNG," says Goethe, " is more significant of 
men's character than what they find laughable." The 
truth of this observation would perhaps have been more 
apparent if he had said culture instead of character. 
The last thing in which the cultivated man can have 
community with the vulgar is their jocularity ; and we 
can hardly exhibit more strikingly the wide gulf which 
separates him from them than by comparing the object 
which shakes the diaphragm of a coal-heaver with tlie 
highly complex pleasure derived from a real witticism. 
That any high order of wit is exceedingly complex, 
anrd demands a ripe and strong mental development, 
has one evidence in the fact that we do not find it in 
boys at all in proportion to their manifestation of other 
powers. Clever boys generally aspire to the heroic and. 
poetic rather than the comic, and the crudest of all 
their efforts are their jokes. Many a witty man will 
remember how, in his school-days, a practical joke, more 
or less Rabelaisian, was for him the ne jpltis ultra of the 
ludicrous. It seems to have been the same with the 
boyhood of mankind. The fun of early races w^as, we 
fancy, of the after-dinner kind — loud-throated laughter 
over the wine-cup, taken too little account of in sober 
moments to enter as an element into their Art, and dif- 
fering as much from the laughter of a Chamfort or a 



6Q GERMAN WIT : 

Sheridan as the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient 
Briton, whose dinner had no other "removes" than 
from acorns to beech-mast and back again to acorns, 
differed from the subtile pleasures of the palate expe- 
rienced by his turtle-eating descendant. It was their lot 
to live seriously through stages which to later genera- 
tions were to become comedj^, as those amiable-looking 
pre-Adamite amphibia which Professor Owen has re- 
stored for us in effigy at Sydenham doubtless took se- 
riously the grotesque physiognomies of their kindred. 
Heavy experience in their case, as in every other, was 
the base from which the salt of future wit was to be 
made. 

Humor is of earlier growth than Wit, and it is in ac- 
cordance with this earlier growth that it has more affin- 
ity with the poetic tendencies, while Wit is more near- 
ly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humor draws 
its materials from situations and characteristics ; Wit 
seizes on unexpected and complex relations. Humor is 
chiefly representative and descriptive ; it is diffuse, and 
flows along without any other law than its own fantas- 
tic will ; or it flits about like a will-o'-the-wisp, amazing 
us by its whimsical transitions. Wit is brief and sud- 
den, and sharply defined as a cr3^stal ; it does not make 
pictures, it is not fantastic ; but it detects an unsuspect- 
ed analogy, or suggests a startling or confounding in- 
ference. Every one who has had the opportunity of 
making the comparison will remember that the effect 
produced on him by some witticisms is closely akin to 
the effect produced on him by subtile reasoning which 
lays open a fallacy or absurdity ; and there are persons 
"•se delight in such reasoning always manifests itself 



IIEINRICn HEINE. 67 

iu laughter. This affinity of Wit with ratiocination is 
the more obvious in proportion as tlie species of wit is 
higher and deals less with words and with superficialities 
than with the essential qualities of things. Some of 
Johnson's most admirable witticisms consist in the sug- 
gestion of an analogy which immediately exposes the 
absurdity of an action or proposition ; and it is only 
their ingenuit}^, condensation, and instantaneousness 
which lift them from reasoning into Wit — they are rea- 
soning raised to a higher power. On the other hand, 
Humor, in its higher forms, and in proportion as it as- 
sociates itself with the sympathetic emotions, continually 
passes into poetry : nearly all great modern humorists 
may be called prose poets. 

Some confusion as to the nature of humor has been 
created by the fact that those w^ho have written most 
eloquently on it have dwelt almost exclusively on its 
higher forms, and have defined humor in general as the 
sympathetic presentation of incongruous elements in 
human nature and life — a definition which only applies 
to its later development. A great deal of humor may 
coexist with a great deal of barbarism, as we see in the 
middle ages; but the strongest flavor of the humor in 
such cases will come, not from sympathy, but more 
probably from triumphant egoism or intolerance; at 
best it will be the love of the ludicrous exhibiting it- 
self in illustrations of successful cunning and of the 
lex talionis, as in " Reineke Fuchs," or shaking off in a 
holiday mood the yoke of a too exacting faith, as in the 
old Mysteries. Again, it is impossible to deny a high 
degree of humor to many practical jokes, but no sym- 
pathetic nature can enjoy them. Strange as the gene- 



68 GERMAN wit: 

alogy may seem, the original parentage of that wonder- 
ful and delicious mixture of fun, fancy, philosophy, and 
feeling which constitutes modern humor was probably 
the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings of a 
suffering enemy — such is the tendency of things tow- 
ards the better and more beautiful ! Probably the rea- 
son why high culture demands more complete harmony 
with its moral sympathies in humor than in wit is that 
humor is in its nature more prolix — that it has not the 
direct and irresistible force of wit. Wit is an electric 
shock, which takes us by violence quite independently 
of our predominant mental disposition ; but humor ap- 
proaches us more deliberately and leaves us masters of 
ourselves. Hence it is that, while coarse and cruel 
humor has almost disappeared from contemporary lit- 
erature, coarse and cruel wit abounds. Even refined 
men cannot help laughing at a coarse bon-mot or a 
lacerating personality, if the " shock " of the witticism 
is a powerful one ; while mere fun will have no power 
over them if it jar on their moral taste. Hence, too, it 
is that, while wit is perennial, humor is liable to become 
superannuated. 

As is usual with definitions and classifications, how- 
ever, this distinction between wit and humor does not 
exactly represent the actual fact. Like all other spe- 
cies. Wit and Humor overlap and blend with each oth- 
er. There are bon-mots, like many of Charles Lamb's, 
which are a sort of facetious hybrids, we hardly know 
whether to call them witty or humorous ; there are 
rather lengthy descriptions or narratives which, like 
Yoltaire's " Micromegas," would be humorous if they 
were not so sparkling and antithetic, so pregnant with 



IIEINRICH HEINE. 69 

suggestion and satire that we are obliged to call them 
witty. We rarely find wit untempered by humor, or 
humor without a spice of wit ; and sometimes we find 
them both united in the highest degree in the same 
mind, as in Shakespeare and Moliere. A happy con- 
junction this, for wit is apt to be cold, and thin-lipped, 
and Mephistophelean in men who have no relish for 
humor, whose lungs do never crow like Chanticleer at 
fun and drollery; and broad-faced rollicking humor 
needs the refining influence of wit. Indeed, it may be 
said that there is no really fine writing in which wit 
has not implicit, if not an explicit, action. The wit 
may never rise to the surface, it may never flame out 
into a witticism ; but it helps to give brightness and 
transparency, it warns off from flights and exaggera- 
tions which verge on the ridiculous — in every genre of 
writing it preserves a man from sinking into the genre 
ennuyeux. And it is eminently needed for this ofiice 
in humorous writing; for, as humor has no limits im- 
posed on it by its material, no law but its own exuber- 
ance, it is apt to become preposterous and wearisome 
unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of all mo- 
notony, of all lengthiness, of all exaggeration. 

Perhaps the nearest approach Nature lias given us to 
a complete analysis, in which wit is as thoroughly ex- 
hausted of humor as possible, and humor as bare as pos- 
sible of wit, is in the typical Frenchman and the typi- 
cal German. Yoltaire, the intensest example of pure 
wit, fails in most of his fictions from his lack of humor. 
" Micromegas " is a perfect tale, because, as it deals 
chiefly with philosophic ideas and does not touch the 
marrow of human feeling and life, the writer's vv'it and 



70 GERMAN wit: 

wisdom were all-sufficient for his purpose. Not so with 
" Candide." Here Yoltaire had to give pictures of life 
as well as to convey philosophic truth and satire, and 
here we feel the want of humor. The sense of the 
ludicrous is continually defeated by disgust, and the 
scenes, instead of presenting us with an amusing or 
agreeable picture, are only the frame for a witticism. 
On the other hand, German humor generally shows no 
sense of measure, no instinctive tact ; it is either floun- 
dering and clumsy as the antics of a leviathan, or labo- 
rious and interminable as a Lapland day, in which one 
loses all hope that the stars and quiet will ever come. 
For this reason Jean Paul, the greatest of German 
humorists, is unendurable to many readers, and fre- 
quently tiresome to all. Here, as elsewhere, the Ger- 
man shows the absence of that delicate perception, that 
sensibility to gradation, which is the essence of tact and 
taste, and the necessary concomitant of wit. All his 
subtilty is reserved for the region of metaphysics. For 
Idenijitdt^ in the abstract, no one can have an acuter 
vision ; but in the concrete he is satisfied with a very 
loose approximation. He has the finest nose for Etyi- 
pirismus in philosophical doctrine, but the presence of 
more or less tobacco-smoke in the air lie breathes is im- 
perceptible to him. To the typical German - — Yetter 
Michel — it is indifferent whether his door-lock will 
catch ; whether his teacup be more or less than an inch 
thick ; whether or not his book have every other leaf 
unstitched; whether his neighbor's conversation be 
more or less of a shout ; whether he pronounce h or p, 
t or d ; whether or not his adored one's teeth be few 
and far between. He has the same sort of insensibility 



HEINEICH HEINE. 71 

to gradations in time. A German comedy is like a 
German sentence : you see no reason in its structure 
why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the 
conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than 
of the author. We have heard Germans use the word 
Ijangeweile, the equivalent for ennui, and we have se- 
cretly wondered vjhat it can be that produces ennui in 
a German. Not the longest of long tragedies, for we 
have known him to pronounce that hochst fesselnd j 
not the heaviest of heavy books, for he delights in that 
2i^'gTundlich j not the slowest of journeys in a Post- 
wagen, for the slower the horses the more cigars he can 
smoke before he reaches his journey's end. German 
ennui must be something as superlative as Barclay's 
treble X, which, we suppose, implies an extremely un- 
known quantity of stupefaction. 

It is easy to see that this national deficiency in nicety 
of perception must have its effect on the national ap- 
p'reciation and exhibition of Humor. You find in Ger- 
many ardent admirers of Shakespeare, who tell you 
that what they think most admirable in him is his 
Wortspiel, his verbal quibbles ; and it is a remarkable 
fact that, among the five great races concerned in mod- 
ern civilization, the German race is the only one which, 
up to the present century, had contributed nothing 
classic to the common stock of European wit and 
humor; unless "Reineke Fuchs" can be fairly claimed 
as a peculiarly Teutonic product. Italy was the birth- 
place of Pantomime and the immortal Pulcinello ; 
Spain had produced Cervantes; France had produced 
Kabelais and Moli^re, and classic wits innumerable ; 
England had yielded Shakespeare and a host of humor- 



72 GERMAN wit: 

ists. But Germany had borne no great comic drama- 
tist, no great satirist, and she has not jet repaired the 
omission ; she had not even produced any humorist of 
a high order. Among her great writers, Lessing is the 
one who is tlie most specifically witty. We feel the 
implicit influence of wit — the "flavor of mind" — 
throughout his writings ; and it is often concentrated 
into pungent satire, as every reader of the " Hamburg- 
ische Dramaturgic " remembers. Still, Lessing's name 
has not become European through his wit, and his 
charming comedy, "Minna von Barnhelm," has won no 
place on a foreign stage. Of course, we do not pretend 
to an exhaustive acquaintance with German literature ; 
we not only admit — we are sure — that it includes much 
comic writing of which we know nothing. We simply 
state the fact, that no German production of that kind, 
before the present century, ranked as European — a fact 
which does not, indeed, determine the amount of the 
national facetiousness, but which is quite decisive as to 
its quality. Whatever may be the stock of fun which 
Germany yields for home consumption, she has pro- 
vided little for the palate of other lands. All honor to 
her for the still greater things she has done for us! 
She has fought the hardest fight for freedom of 
thought, has produced the grandest inventions, has 
made magnificent contributions to science, has given us 
some of the divinest poetry, and quite the divinest 
music, in the world. We revere and treasure the prod- 
ucts of the German mind. To say that that mind is 
not fertile in wit, is only like saying that excellent 
wheat-land is not rich pasture ; to say that we do not 
enjoy German facetiousness, is no more than to say 



HEINRICH HEINE. 13 

that though the horse is the finest of quadrupeds, we 
do not like him to hiy his hoof playfully on our shoul- 
der. Still, as we have noticed that the pointless puns 
and stupid jocularity of the boy may ultimately be 
developed into the epigrammatic brilliancy and pol- 
ished playfulness of the man ; as we believe that racy 
wit and chastened delicate humor are inevitably the 
results of invigorated and refined mental activity, we 
can also believe that Germany will one day yield a 
crop of wits and humorists. 

Perhaps there is already an earnest of that future 
crop in the existence of Heinrich Heine, a German born 
with the present century, who, to Teutonic imagination, 
sensibility, and humor, adds an amount of esprit that 
would make him brilliant among the most brilliant of 
Frenchmen. True, this unique German wit is half a 
Hebrew ; but he and his ancestors spent their youth in 
German air, and were reared on Wicrst and Sauerkraut, 
so that he is as much a German as a pheasant is an Eng- 
lish bird, or a potato an Irish vegetable. But whatever 
else he may be, Heine is one of the most remarkable 
men of this age ; no echo, but a real voice, and there- 
fore, like all genuine things in this world, worth study- 
ing ; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feel- 
ings for us in delicious song ; a humorist, who touches 
leaden folly with the magic wand of his fancy, and 
transmutes it into the fine gold of art — who sheds his 
sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beaute- 
ous rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, 
who holds in his mighty hand the most scorching light- 
nings of satire ; an artist in prose literature, who has 
shown even more completely than Goethe the possi* 

4 



74: GEKMAI>r WIT . 

bilities of German prose ; and — in spite of all charges 
against him, true as well as false — a lover of freedom, 
who has spoken wise and brave words on behalf of his 
fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with 
all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to en- 
dure terrible physical ills ; and as such he calls forth 
more than an intellectual interest. It is true, alas I that 
there is a heavy weight in the other scale — that Heine's 
magnificent powers have often served only to give elec- 
tric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that 
his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and 
gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry 
clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity 
of his occasional coarseness and personality is unpar- 
alleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been 
exceeded by the license of former days. Hence, before 
his volumes are put within the reach of immature minds, 
there is need of a friendly penknife to exercise a strict 
censorship. Yet, when all coarseness, all scurrility, all 
Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of 
other men is removed, there will be a plenteous remain- 
der of exquisite poetry, of wit, humor, and just thought. 
It is apparently too often a congenial task to write se- 
vere words about the transgressions committed by men 
of genius, especially when the censor has the advantage 
of being himself a man of no genius, so that those trans- 
gressions seem to him quite gratuitous ; he, forsooth, 
never lacerated any one by his w^it, or gave irresistible 
piquancy to a coarse allusion, and his indignation is not 
mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation that lies 
in transcendent power. We are also apt to measure 
what a gifted man has done by our arbitrary conception 



HEINRICH HEINE. 75 

of what he might have done, rather than bj a compari- 
son of his actual doings with our own or those of other 
ordinary men. We make ourselves over-zealous agents 
of Heaven, and demand that our brother should bring 
usurious interest for his five talents, forgetting that it 
is less easy to manage five talents than two. Whatever 
benefit there may be in denouncing the evil, it is after 
all more edifying, and certainly more cheering, to ap- 
preciate the good. Hence, in endeavoring to give our 
readers some account of Heine and his works, we shall 
not dwell lengthily on his failings ; we shall not hold 
the candle up to dusty, vermin -haunted corners, but 
let the light fall as much as possible on the nobler and 
more attractive details. Our sketch of Heine's life, 
which has been drawn from various sources, will be free 
from everything like intrusive gossip, and will derive 
its coloring chiefly from the autobiographical hints and 
descriptions scattered through his own writings. Those 
of our readers who happen to know nothing of Heine 
will in this way be making their acquaintance with the 
writer while they are learning the outline of his ca- 
reer. 

We have said that Heine was born with the present 
century ; but this statement is not precise, for we learn 
that, according to his certificate of baptism, he was born 
December 12, 1799. However, as he himself says, the 
important point is, that he was born, and born on the 
banks of the Khine, at Diisseldorf, where his father was 
a merchant. In his " Reisebilder" he gives us some 
recollections, in his wild poetic way, of the dear old 
town where he spent his childhood, and of his school- 
boy troubles there. We shall quote from these in but- 



76 GERMAN wit: 

terflj fashion, sipping a little nectar here and there, 
without regard to an j strict order : 

" I first saw the light on the banks of that lovely stream, where 
Folly grows on the green hills, and in autumn is plucked, pressed, 
poured into casks, and sent into foreign lands. Believe me, I yes- 
terday heard some one utter folly which, in anno 1811, lay in a 
bunch of grapes I then saw growing on the Johannisberg. . . . Mou 
Dieu ! if I had only such faith in me that I could remove moun- 
tains, the Johannisberg would be the very mountain I should send 
for wherever I might be ; but as my faith is not so strong, im- 
agination must help me, and it transports me at once to the lovely 
Rhine. ... I am again a child, and playing with other children on 
the Schlossplatz, at DUsseldorf on the Rhine. Yes, madam, there 
was I born ; and I note this expressly, in case, after my death, seven 
cities — Schilda, Kriihwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Diilken, Gottingeu, 
and Schoppeustadt — should contend for the honor of being my 
birthplace. DUsseldorf is a town on the Rhine ; sixteen thousand 
men live there, and many hundred thousand men besides lie buried 
there. . . . Among them, many of whom my mother says that it 
would be better if they were still living; for example, my grand- 
father and my uncle, the old Herr Von Geldern and the young Herr 
Von Geldern, both such celebrated doctors, who saved so many men 
from death, and yet must die themselves. And the pious Ursula, 
who carried me in her arms when I was a child, also lies buried 
there, and a rose-bush grows on her grave ; she loved the sceut of 
roses so well in life, and her heart was pure rose-incense and good- 
ness. The knowing old Canon, too, lies buried there. Heavens, 
what an object he looked when I last saw him ! He was made np 
of nothing but mind and plasters, and nevertheless studied day and 
night, as if he were alarmed lest the worms should find an idea too 
little in his head. And the little William lies there, and for this I 
am to blame. We were schoolfellows in the Franciscan monastery, 
and were playing on that side of it where the DUssel flows between 
etone walls, and I said, "■ William, fetch out the kitten that has 
just fallen in," and merrily he went down on to the plank which 
lay across the brook, snatched the kitten out of the water, but fell 



HEINEICH HEINE. 77 

iu himself, aud was dragged out dripping and dead. The kitten lived 
to a good old age. . . . Princes iu that day were not the tornieute<l 
race they are now ; the crowu grew firmly ou their heads, and at 
night they drew a nigbtcap over it, and slept peacefully, and peace- 
fully slept the people at their feet ; and when the people waked iu 
the morning, they said "Good-morning, father!" — aud the princes 
answered, *' Good-morning, dear children !" But it was suddenly 
quite otherwise ; for when we awoke one morning at Diisseldorf, 
and were ready to say, " Good-morning, father !" — lo ! the father 
was gone away; aud in the whole towu there was nothing but 
dumb sorrow, everywhere a sort of funeral disposition ; and people 
glided along silently to the market, aud read the long placard placed 
ou the door of the Town Hall. It was dismal weather; yet the 
leau tailor, Kiliau, stood iu his uaukeeu jacket which he usually 
wore only iu the house, aud his blue worsted stockings hung down 
so that his naked legs peeped out mournfully, aud his thiu lips 
tremhled while he muttered the announcement to himself. And 
an old soldier read rather louder, and at many a word a crystal tear 
trickled down to his brave old mustache. I stood near him aud 
wept in company, and asked him, " Why ive weptf" He answered, 
"The Elector has abdicated." And then he read again, and at the 
words, " for the long-manifested fidelity of my subjects," and " here- 
by set you free from your allegiance," he wept more than ever. It 
is strangely touching to see an old man like that, with faded uni- 
form aud scarred face, weep so bitterly all of a sudden. While we 
were readiug, the Electoral arms were taken down from the Town 
Hall ; everyfcbiug had such a desolate air that it was as if au eclipse 
of the sun were expected. ... I went home aud wept, and wailed 
out, "The Elector has abdicated!" In vain my mother took a 
world of trouble to explain the thing to me. I knew what I knew ; 
I was not to be persuaded, but went crying to bed, aud in the night 
dreamed that the world was at an end." 

Tlie next morning, howev^er, the sun rises as usual, 
and Joachim Murat is proclaimed Grand Duke, where- 
upon there is a holiday at the public school, and Hein- 
rich (or Harry, for that was his baptismal name, which 



78 GERMAN wit: 

lie afterwards had the good taste to change), perched on 
the bronze horse of the Electoral statue, sees quite a dif- 
ferent scene from yesterday's : 

"■ The next day the world was again all iu order, and we had 
school as before, and things were got by heart as before — the Ro- 
man emperors, chronology, the nonns in im, the verha irregularia, 
Greek, Hebrew, geography, mental arithmetic ! — heavens ! my head 
is still dizzy with it, all must be learned by heart ! And a great 
deal of this came in very conveniently for me in after-life. For if 
I had not known the Roman kings by heart, it would subsequently 
have been quite inditFerent to me whether Niebuhr had proved or 
had not proved that they never really existed. . . . But oh ! the 
trouble I had at school with the endless dates. And with arith- 
metic it was still worse. What I uuderstood best was subtraction, 
for that has a very practical rule : " Four can't be taken from three, 
therefore I must borrow one." But I advise every one in such a 
case to borrow a few extra pence, for no one can tell what may 
happen. ... As for Latin, you have no idea, madam, what a compli- 
cated affair it is. The Romans would never have found time to 
couquer the world if they had first had to learn Latin. Luckily 
for them, they already knew in their cradles what nouns have their 
accusative in im. I, on the contrary, had to learn them by heart in 
the sweat of my brow ; nevertheless, it is fortunate for me that I 
kuow them ; . . , and the fact that I have them at my finger-ends if 
I should ever happen to want them suddenly, affords me much in- 
ward repose and consolation in many troubled hours of life. ... Of 
Greek I will not say a word; I should get too much irritated. The 
monks in the middle ages were not so far wrong when they main- 
tained that Greek was an invention of the devil. God knows the 
suffering I endured over it. . . . With Hebrew it went somewhat 
better, for I had always a great liking for the Jews, though to this 
very hour they crucify my good name ; but I could never get on 
so far in Hebrew as my watch, which had much familiar intercourse 
with pawnbrokers, and in this way contracted many Jewish habits 
—for examjde, it wouldn't go on Saturdays." 

Heine's parents were apparently not wealthy, but his 



HEINRICH HEINE. 79 

education was cared for by his uncle, Solomon Heine, 
a great banker in Hamburg, so that he had no early 
pecuniary disadvantages to struggle with. He seems 
to Iiave been very happy in his mother, who was not of 
Hebrew, but of Teutonic blood ; he often mentions her 
with reverence and affection, and in the " Buch der 
Lieder" there are two exquisite sonnets addressed to 
her, which tell how his proud spirit was always sub- 
dued by the charm of her presence, and how her love 
was the home of his heart after restless, weary wander- 

in'g: 

" Wie machtig auch mein stolzer Muth sich blabe, 
In deiner selig siissen, trauten Nahe 
Ergreift mich oft eiu demuthvolle Zagen. 

# « « « # 

Uud iramer irrte ich nach Liebe, immer 
Nacb Liebe, docb die Liebe fand icb nimmer, 
Und kehrte um nacb Hause, krauk uud triibe. 
Doch da bist du eutgegen mir gekommen, 
Und acb 1 was da in deinem Aug' gescbwomraen, 
Das war die siisse, langgesucbte Liebe." 

He was at first destined for a mercantile life, but 
Nature declared too strongly against this plan. " God 
knows," he has lately said in conversation with his 
brother, " I w^ould willingly have become a banker, but 
I could never bring myself to that pass. I very early 
discerned that bankers would one day be the rulers of 
the world." So commerce was at length given up for 
law, the study of which he began in 1819 at the Uni- 
versity of Bonn. He had already published some poems 
in the corner of a newspaper, and among them was one 
on Napoleon, the object of his youthful enthusiasm. 
This poem, he says in a letter to St. Rene Taillandier, 



80 GERMAN WIT : 

was written when he was only sixteen. It is still to be 
found in the " Buch der Lieder" under the title "Die 
Grenadiere." and it proves that even in its earliest efforts 
his genius showed a strongly specific character. 

It will be easily imagined that the germs of poetry 
sprouted too vigorously in Heine's brain for jurispru- 
dence to find much room there. Lectures on history and 
literature, we are told, were more diligently attended 
than lectures on law. He had taken care, too, to furnish 
his trunk with abundant editions of the poets, and the 
poet he especially studied at that time was Byron. At 
a later period we find his taste taking another direction, 
for he writes: "Of all authors, Byron is precisely the 
one who excites in me the most intolerable emotion; 
whereas Scott, in every one of his works, gladdens my 
heart, soothes and invigorates me." Another indication 
of his bent in these Bonn days was a newspaper essay, 
in which he attacked the Komantic school ; and here also 
he went through that chicken-pox of authorship — the 
production of a tragedy. Heine's tragedy — " Almansor " 
— is, as might be expected, better than the majority of 
these youthful mistakes. The tragic collision lies in 
the conflict between natural affection and the deadly 
hatred of religion and of race — in the sacrifice of youth- 
ful lovers to the strife between Moor and Spaniard, 
Moslem and Christian. Some of the situations are strik- 
ing, and there are passages of considerable poetic merit; 
but the characters are little more than shadowy vehicles 
for the poetry, and there is a want of clearness and 
probability in the structure. It was published two years 
later, in company with another tragedy, in one act, 
called "William Eatcliffe," in which there is rather a 



HEINRICH HEINE. 81 

feeble use of the Scotch second-sight after the manner 
of the Fate in the Greek tragedy. We smile to find 
Heine saying of his tragedies, in a letter to a friend soon 
after their publication : '' I know they will be terribly 
cut up, but I will confess to you in confidence that they 
are very good — better than my collection of poems, 
wliich are not worth a shot." Elsewhere he tells us, 
that when, after one of Paganini's concerts, he was pas- 
sionately complimenting the great master on his violin- 
playing, Paganini interrupted him thus: "But how 
w^re you pleased with my hows V 

In 1820, Heine left Bonn for Gottingen. He there 
pursued his oniission of law studies; and at the end of 
three months he was rusticated for a breach of the laws 
against duelling. While there, he had attempted a ne- 
gotiation with Brockhaus for the printing of a volume 
of poems, and had endured that first ordeal of lovers 
and poets — a refusal. It was not until a year after 
that he found a Berlin publisher for his first volume of 
poems, subsequently transformed, with additions, into 
tlie " Buch der Lieder." He remained between two and 
three years at Berlin, and the society he found there 
seems to have made these years an important epoch in 
his culture. He was one of the youngest members of a 
circle which assembled at the house of the poetess Elisa 
von Hohenhausen, the translato.r o»f Byron — a circle 
which included Chamisso, Yarnhagen, and Pahel (Yani- 
liMgen's wife). For Rahel, Heine had a profound ad- 
miration and regard. He afterwards dedicated to her 
the poems included under the title "Heimkehr;" and 
he frequently refers to her or quotes her in a waj^ that 
indicates how he valued her influence. According to 



82 GERMAN wit: 

his friend, F. von Hohenbausen, the opinions concern- 
ing Heine's talent were very various among his Berhn 
friends, and it was only a small minority that had any 
presentiment of his future fame. In this minority was 
Elise von Hohenhausen, who proclaimed Heine as the 
Byron of Germany ; but her opinion was met with much 
head-shaking and opposition. We can imagine how 
precious was such a recognition as hers to the young 
poet, then only two or three and twenty, and with by 
no means an impressive personality for superficial eyes. 
Perhaps even the deep-sighted were far from detecting 
in that small, blond, pale young man, with quiet, gentle 
manners, the latent powers of ridicule and sarcasm — the 
terrible talons that were one day to be thrust out from 
the velvet paw of the young leopard. 

It was apparently during this residence in Berlin that 
Heine united himself with the Lutheran Church. He 
would willingly, like many of his friends, he tells us, 
have remained free from all ecclesiastical ties if the 
authorities there had not forbidden residence in Prus- 
sia, and especially in Berlin, to every one who did not 
belong to one of the positive religions recognized by the 
State : 

" As Heury IV. ouce laughingly said, 'Paris vaut hien une messe,' 
so I might with reason say, 'Berlin vaut Men une preche ;' and I 
could afterwards, as before, accommodate myself to the very en- 
lightened Christianity, filtrated from all superstition, which could 
then be had in the churches of Berlin, and which was even free 
from the divinity of Christ, like turtle-soup without turtle." 

At the same period, too, Heine became acquainted 
with Hegel. In his lately published " Gestandnisse " 
(Confessions), he throws on Hegel's influence over him 



HEINRICH HEINE. S3 

Yne blue light of demoniacal wit, and confounds us bj 
the most bewildering, double-edged sarcasms; but that 
influence seems to have been at least more wholesome 
than the one which produced the mocking retractations 
of the " Gestandnisse." Through all his self-satire, we 
discern that in those days he had something like real 
earnestness and enthusiasm^ which are certainly not ap- 
parent in his present theistic confession of faith : 

'' On the wliole, I never felt a strong enthusiasm for this philos- 
ophy, and conviction on the subject was out of the question. I 
never was an abstract thinker, and I accepted the synthesis of the 
Hegelian doctrine without demanding any proof, since its conse- 
quences flattered my vanity. I was young and proud, and it 
pleased my vainglory when I learned from Hegel that the true 
God was not, as my grandmother believed, the God who lives in 
heaven, but myself hero upon earth. This foolish pride had not in 
the least a pernicious influence on my feelings ; on the contrary, it 
heightened these to the pitch of heroism. I was at that time so 
lavish in generosity and self-sacrifice that I must assuredly have 
eclipsed the most brilliant deeds of those good iourgeois of virtue 
who acted merely from a sense of duty, and simply obeyed the 
laws of nhorality." 

His sketch of Hegel is irresistibly amusing ; but we 
must warn the reader that Heine's anecdotes are often 
mere devices of style by which he conveys his satire or 
opinions. The reader will see that he does not neglect 
an opportunity of giving a sarcastic lash or two, in 
passing, to Meyerbeer, for whose music he has a great 
cantempt. The sarcasm conveyed in the substitution 
of reputation for 'music and journalists for onusiciaiis 
might perhaps escape any one unfamiliar with the sly 
and unexpected frurns of Heine's ridicule : 

" To speak frankly, I seldom understood him, and only arrived 



84 GERMAN wit: 

at the meaning of his words by snhsequent reflection. I believe 
he wished not to be uiulerstood ; and hence his practice of spriiik- 
liug his disconrse with modifying parentheses; hence, perhaps, his 
preference for persons of whom he knew that they did not nnder- 
stand him, and to whom he all the more willingly granted the honor 
of his familiar acquaintance. Thus every one in Berlin wondered 
at the intimate companionship of the i)rofound Hegel with the late 
HeJnrich Beer, a brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer, who is universally 
known by his reputation, and who has been celebrated by the clev- 
erest journalists. This Beer, namely Heinrich, was a thoroughly 
stupid fellow, and indeed was afterwards actually declared imbecile 
by his family, and placed under guardianship, because instead of 
making a name for himself in art or in science by means of his great 
fortune, he squandered his money on childish trifles ; and, for ex- 
ample, one day bought six thousand thalers' worth of walking- 
sticks. This poor man, who had no wish to pass either for a great 
tragic dramatist, or for a great star-gazer, or for a laurel-crowned 
musical genius, a rival of Mozart and Rossini, and preferred giving 
his money for walking-sticks — this degenerate Beer enjoyed Hegel's 
most confidential society ; he was the philosopher's bosom friend, 
his Pylades, and accompanied him everywhere like his shadow. 
The equally witty and gifted Felix Mendelssohn once sought to ex- 
plain this phenomenon by maintaining that Hegel did not under- 
stand Heinrich Beer. I now believe, however, that the real ground 
of that intimacy consisted in this — Hegel was convinced that no 
word of what he said was understood by Heinrich Beer ; and he 
could therefore, in his presence, give himself up to all the intel- 
lectual outpourings of the moment. In general, Hegel's conversa- 
tion was a sort of monologue, sighed forth by starts in a noiseless 
voice : the odd roughness of his expressions often struck me, and 
many of them have remained in my memory. One beautiful star- 
light evening we stood together at the window, and I, a young msiu 
of one-and-twenty, having just had a good dinner and finished my 
coffee, spoke with enthusiasm of the stars, and called them the 
xittoitaiions of the departed. But the master muttered to himself, 
' The stars! ham ! hum! The stars are only a brilliant leprosy Qn 
the face of the heavens.' ' For God's sake,' I cried, ' is there, then, 



HEINRICH HEINE. 85 

no liappy place above, where virtue is rewarded after death V Bat 
lie, staring at me with his pale eyes, said, cuttingly, ' So you want a 
honus for having taken care of your sick mother, and refrained from 
poisoning your worthy brother V At these words he looked anx- 
iously round, but appeared immediately set at rest when he ob- 
served that it was only Heinrich Beer, who had approached to in- 
vite him to a game at whist." 

In 1823, Heine returned to Gottingen to complete 
his career as a law-stndent, and this time he gave evi- 
dence of advanced mental maturity, not only by pro- 
ducing many of the charming poems subsequently in- 
cluded in the " Keisebilder," but also by prosecuting 
his professional studies diligently enough to leave Got- 
tingen in 1825 as Doctor juris. Hereupon he settled at 
Hamburg as an advocate, but his profession seems to 
have been the least pressing of his occupations. In those 
days, a small, blond young man, with the brim of his hat 
drawn over his nose, his coat flying open, and his hands 
stuck in his trouser-pockets, might be seen stumbling 
along the streets of Hamburg, staring from side to side, 
and appearing to have small regard to the figure he 
made in the eyes of the good citizens. Occasionally an 
inhabitant, more literary than usual, would point out 
this young man to his companion as Heinrich Heine ; 
but in general the young poet had not to endure the 
inconveniences of being a lion. His poems were de- 
voured, but he was not asked to devour flattery in re- 
turn. Whether because the fair Hamburgers acted in 
the spirit of Johnson's advice to Hannah More — to 
" consider what her flattery was worth before she choked 
him witli it" — or for some other reason, Heine, accord- 
ing to the testimony of August Lewald, to w4iom we 
owe these particulars of his Hamburg life, was left free 



80 GEEMAN wit: 

from the persecution of tea-parties. Not, however, from 
another persecution of genius — nervous headaches, which 
some persons, we are told, regarded as an improbable 
fiction, intended as a pretext for raising a delicate white 
hand to his forehead. It is probable that the sceptical 
persons alluded to were themselves untroubled with 
nervous headache, and that their hands were not deli- 
cate. Slight details these, but worth telling about a 
man of genius, because they help us to keep in mind 
that he is, after all, our brother, having to endure the 
petty every-day ills of life as we have ; with this differ- 
ence, that his heightened sensibility converts what are 
mere insect-stings for us into scorpion-stings for him. 

It was, perhaps, in these Hamburg days that Heine 
paid the visit to Goethe, of which he gives us this 
charming little picture; 

" When I visited him iu Weimar, and stood before him, I invol- 
untarily glanced at his side to see whether the eagle was not there 
with the lightning in his beak. I was nearly speaking Greek to 
him ; but, as I observed that he understood German, I stated to 
him, iu German, that the plums on the road between Jena and 
Weimar were very good. I had for so many loug winter nights 
thought over what lofty and profound thiugs I would say to 
Goethe, if ever I saw him. And when I saw him at last, I said to 
him that the Saxon plnms wxre very good! And Goethe smiled." 

During the next few years Heine produced the most 
popular of all his works — those which have won him 
his place as the greatest of living German poets and 
humorists. Between 1826 and 1829 appeared the four 
volumes of the " Reisebilder " (Pictures of Travel), and 
the " Buch der Lieder" (Book of Songs) — a volume of 
lyrics, of which it is hard to say whether their greatest 



HEINRICH HEINE. 87 

charm is the lightness and finish of their style, their 
vivid and original imaginativeness, or their simple, pure 
sensibility. In his " Reisebilder," Heine carries us with 
him to the Harz, to the isle of Norderney, to his native 
town, Diisseldorf, to Italy, and to England, sketching 
scenery and character, now with the wildest, most fan- 
tastic humor, now with the finest idyllic sensibility — 
letting his thoughts wander from poetry to politics, 
from criticism to dreamy revery, and blending fun, im- 
agination, reflection, and satire in a sort of exquisite, 
ever-varying shimmer, like the hues of the opal. 

Heine's journey to England did not at all heighten 
his regard for the English. He calls our language the 
'' hiss of egoism " {Zischlaute des Egoismus) ; and his 
ridicule of English awkwardness is as merciless as — 
English ridicule of German awkwardness. His antipa- 
thy towards us seems to have grown in intensity, like 
many of his other antipathies ; and in his " Yermischte 
Schriften " he is more bitter than ever. Let us quote 
one of his philippics, since bitters are understood to be 
wholesome : 

"It is certainly a frightful iujustice to pronounce sentence of 
coudemuation on an entire people. But, with regard to the Eng- 
lish, momentary disgust might betray me into this injustice; 
and, on looking at the mass, I easily forget the many brave and 
noble men who distinguished themselves by intellect and love of 
freedom. But these, especially the British poets, were always all 
the more glaringly in contrast with the rest of the nation ; they 
were isolated martyrs to their national relations; and, besides, 
great geniuses do not belong to the particular land of their birth: 
they scarcely belong to this earth, the Golgotha of their sufferings. 
The mass — the English blockheads, God forgive me ! — are hateful 
to me in my inmost soul ; and I often regard tliem not at all as my 



88 GERMAN wit: 

fellow-men, but as miserable automata — macbiues, whose motive- 
power is egoism. In these moods, it seems to me as if I heard the 
whizzing wheel- work by which they tbiuk, feel, reckon, digest, and 
pray : their praying, their mechanical Anglican chnrch-going, with 
tbe gilt Prayer-book under their arms, their stupid, tiresome Sun- 
day, their awkward piety, is most of all odious to me. I am firmly 
convinced that a blaspheming Frenchman is a more pleasing sight 
for the Divinity than a praying Englishman." 

On his return from England, Heine was employed at 
Munich in editing the Allgemeinen Politischen Anna- 
len I but in 1830 he was again in the north, and the 
news of the July Revolution surprised him on the Isl- 
and of Heligoland. He has given us a graphic picture 
of his democratic enthusiasm in those days in some let- 
ters, apparently written from Heligoland, which he has 
inserted in his book on Borne. We quote some passa- 
ges, not only for their biographic interest, as showing a 
phase of Heine's mental history, but because they are a 
specimen of his power in that kind of dithyrambic writ- 
ing which, in less masterly hands, easily becomes ridic- 
ulous : 

"The thick packet of newspapers arrived from the Continent 
with these warm, glowing -hot tidings. They were sunbeams 
wrapped up in packing-paper, and they inflamed my soul till it 
burst into the wildest conflagration. ... It is all like a dream to 
me; especiallj' the name Lafayette sounds to me like a legend out 
of my earliest childhood. Does he really sit again on horseback, 
commanding the National Guard ? I almost fear it may not be 
true, for it is in print. I will myself go to Paris, to be convinced 
ofit with my bodily eyes. ... It must be splendid when he rides 
through the streets, tbe citizen of two worlds, the godlike old man, 
with bis silver locks streaming down his sacred shoulder. . . . He 
greets, witb his dear old eyes, the grandchildren of those who once 
fought with him for freedom and equality. ... It is now sixty years 



HEINRICH HEINE, 89 

since ho returned from America with the Declaration of Human 
Rights — the decalogue of the world's new creed, which was revealed 
to him amid the thunders and lightnings of cannon. . . . And the 
tricolored flag waves again on the towers of Paris, and its streets 
resound with the Marseillaise ! ... It is all over with my yearning 
for repose. I know now again what I will do, what I ought to do, 
what I must do. ... I am the son of the Eevolntiou, and seize again 
the hallowed weapons on which my mother prouounced her magic 
benediction. , . . Flowers! flowers! I will crown my head for the 
death-fight. And the lyre, too — reach me the lyre, that I may sing 
a battle-song. , . . Words like flaming stars, that shoot down from 
the heavens, and burn up the palaces, and illuminate the huts. . . . 
Words like bright javelius, that whirr up to the seventh heaven, 
and strike the pious hypocrites who have skulked into the Holy 
of Holies. ... I am all joy and song, all sword and flame ! Per- 
haps, too, all delirium. . . . One of those sunbeams wrapped in 
brown pajjer has flown to my brain, and set my thoughts aglow. 
In vain I diji my head into the sea. No water extinguishes this 
Greek fire. . . . Even the poor Heligolanders shout for joy, although 
they have only a sort of dim instinct of what has occurred. The 
fisherman who yesterday took me over to the little sand-island, 
w hich is the bathing-place here, said to me, smilingly, ' The poor 
people have won !' Yes, instinctively the people comprehend such 
events ; perhaps better than wx, with all our means of knowledge. 
Thus Frau von Varnhagen once told me that, when the issue of the 
battle of Leipzig was not yet known, the maid-servant suddenly 
rushed into the room with the sorrowful cry, ^The nobles have 
won !' . . . This morning another packet of newspapers is come. I 
devour them like manna. Child that I am, affecting details touch 
me yet more than the momentous whole. Oh, if I could but see 
the dog Medor! . . . The dog Medor brought his master his gun and 
caitridge-box ; and when his master fell, and was buried with his 
fellow-heroes in the Court of the Louvre, there stayed the poor 
dog, like a monument of faithfulness, sitting motionless on the 
grave, day and night, eating but little of the food that was oftered 
him, burying the greater part of it in the earth, periiaps as nour- 
ishment for his buried master !" 



90 GERMAN WIT '. 

The enthusiasm which was kept thus at boiling heat 
by imagination cooled down rapidlj when brought into 
contact with reality. In the same book he indicates, in 
his caustic way, the commencement of that change in 
his political temperature — for it cannot be called a 
change in opinion — which has drawn down on him im- 
mense vituperation from some of the patriotic party, 
but which seems to have resulted simply from the es- 
sential antagonism between keen wit and fanaticism : 

" On the very first day of my arrival in Paris I observed that 
things wore, in reality, quite different colors from those which had 
heen shed on them, when in perspective, by the light of my enthu- 
siasm. The silver locks which I saw fluttering so majestically on 
the shoulders of Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, were metamor- 
phosed into a brown perruque, which made a pitiable covering for 
a narrow skull. And even the dog Medor, which I visited in the 
Court of the Louvre, and which, encamped under tricolored flags 
and trophies, very quietly allowed himself to be fed — he was not 
at all the right dog, but quite an ordinary brute, who assumed to 
himself merits not his own, as often happens with the French ; 
and, like many others, he made a profit out of the glory of the 
Ee volution. . . . He was pampered and patronized, perhaps pro- 
moted to the highest posts, while the true Medor, some days after 
the battle, modestly slunk out of sight, like the true people who 
created the Be volution." 

That it was not merely interest in French politics 
which sent Heine to Paris in 1831, but also a percep- 
tion that German air was not friendly to sympathizers 
in July revolutions, is humorously intimated in the 

^'Gestandnisse:" 

'^ I had done much and suffered much, and when the sun of the 
July Revolution arose in France, I had become very weary, and 
needed some recreation. Also, my native air was every day more 



HEINRICH HEINE. 91 

unhealthy for me, and it was time I should seriously think of a 
change of climate. I had visions : the clouds terrified me, and 
made all sorts of ugly faces at me. It often seemed to me as if the 
eun were a Prussian cockade ; at night I dreamed of a hideous black 
eagle, which gnawed my liver ; and I was very melancholy. Add 
to this, I had become acquainted with an old Berlin Justizrath, who 
had spent many years in the fortress of Spandau, and he related to 
me how unpleasant it is when one is obliged to wear irons in win- 
ter. For myself, I thought it very unchristian that the irons were 
not warmed a trifle. If the irons were warmed a little for us they 
would not make so unpleasant an impression, and even chilly nat- 
Tues might then bear them very well; it would be only proper con- 
sideiatiou, too, if the fetters were perfumed with essence of roses 
and laurels, as is the case in this country (France). I asked my 
Justizrath whether he often got oysters to eat at Spandau? He 
said, No; Spandau was too far from the sea. Moreover, he said 
meat was very scarce there, and there was no kind of volaille ex- 
cept flies, which fell into one's soup. ... Now, as I really needed 
some recreation, and as Spandau is too far from the sea for oysters 
to be got there, and the Spandau fly-soup did not seem very appe- 
tizing to me — as, besides all this, the Prussian chains are very cold 
in winter, and could not be conducive to my health, I resolved to 
visit Paris." 

Since this time Paris has been Heine's home, and his 
best prose works have been written either to inform the 
Germans on French affairs or to inform the French on 
German philosophy and literature. He became a cor- 
respondent of the AUgeineine Zeitung^ and his corre- 
spondence, which extends, with an interruption of sev- 
eral years, from 1831 to 1844:, forms the volume enti- 
tled " Franzosische Zustande ''(French Affairs), and the 
second and third volumes of his " Yermischte Schrif- 
ten." It is a witty and often wise commentary on pub- 
lic men and public events ; Louis Philippe, Casimir Pe- 



02 GERMAN wit: 

rier, Thiers, Guizot, Kothscliild, the Catholic party, the 
Socialist party, have their turn of satire and apprecia- 
tion, for Heine deals out both with an impartiality which 
made his less favorable critics — Borne, for example — 
charge him with the rather incompatible sins of reck- 
less caprice and venality. Literature and art alternate 
with politics : we have now a sketch of Georges Sand, 
or a description of one of Horace Yernet's pictures; 
now a criticism of Victor Hugo, or of Liszt ; now an 
irresistible caricature of Spontini, or Kalkbrenner; and 
occasionally the predominant satire is relieved by a fine 
saying or a genial word of admiration. And all is done 
w^ith that airy lightness, yet precision of touch, which 
distinguishes Heine beyond any living waiter. The 
charge of venality was loudly made against Heine in 
Germany : first, it was said that he was paid to write ; 
then, that he was paid to abstain from writing ; and the 
accusations were supposed to have an irrefragable basis 
in the fact that he accepted a stipend from the French 
government. He has never attempted to conceal the 
reception of that stipend, and we think his statement 
(in the " Yermischte Schriften ") of the circumstances 
under which it was offered and received is a sufiicient 
vindication of himself and M. Guizot from any dishonor 
in the matter. 

It may be readily imagined that Heine, with so large 
a share of the Gallic element as he has in his composition, 
was soon at his ease in Parisian society, and the years 
here were bright with intellectual activity and social 
enjoyment. "His wit," wrote August Lewald, "is a 
perpetual gushing fountain ; he throws off the most de- 
licious descriptions with amazing facility, and sketches 



HEINRICH HEINE. 93 

the most comic characters in conversation." Such a 
man could not be neglected in Paris, and Heine was 
sought on all sides — as a guest in distinguished salons, 
as a possible proselyte in the circle of the Saint-Simoni- 
ans. His literary productiveness seems to have been 
furthered by this congenial life, which, however, was 
soon, to some extent, embittered by the sense of exile; 
for, since 1835, both his works and his person have been 
the object of denunciation by the German government. 
Between 1833 and 1845 appeared the four volumes of 
the " Salon," " Die Romantische Schule" (both written, 
in the first instance, in French) ; the book on Borne ; 
"Atta Troll," a romantic poem; "Deutschland," an 
exquisitely humorous poem, describing his last visit to 
Germany, and containing some grand passages of seri- 
ous writing ; and the " Neue Gedichte," a collection of 
lyrical poems. Among the most interesting of his prose 
works are the second volume of the " Salon," which con- 
tains a survey of religion and philosophy in Germany, 
and the " Romantische Schule," a delightful introduc- 
tion to that phase of German literature known as the 
Romantic School. The book on Borne, which appeared 
in 1840, two or three years after the death of that writer, 
excited great indignation in Germany, as a wreaking of 
vengeance on the dead, an insult to the memory of a 
man who had worked and suffered in the cause of free- 
dom — a cause which was Heine's own. Borne, we may 
observe parenthetically, for the information of those 
who are not familiar with recent German literature, was 
a remarkable political writer of the ultra-Liberal party 
in Germany, who resided in Paris at the same time as 
Heine — a man of stern, uncompromising partisanship 



94 GEEMAN wit: 

and bitter humor. Without justifying Heine's produc- 
tion of this book, we see excuses for him which should 
temper the condemnation passed on it. There was a 
radical opposition of nature between him and Borne : 
to use his own distinction, Heine is a Hellene — sensu- 
ous, realistic, exquisitely alive to the beautiful; while 
Borne was a Nazarene — ascetic, spiritualistic, despisin"" 
the pure artist as destitute of earnestness. Heine has 
too keen a perception of practical absurdities and dam- 
aging exaggerations ever to become a thorough-going 
partisan ; and with a love of freedom, a faith in the 
ultimate trinmph of democratic principles, of which we 
see no just reason to doubt the genuineness and consist- 
ency, he has been unable to satisfy more zealous and 
one-sided Liberals by giving his adhesion to their views 
and measures, or by adopting a denunciatory tone against 
those in the opposite ranks. Borne could not forgive 
what he regarded as Heine's epicurean indifference and 
artistic dalliance, and he at length gave vent to his an- 
tipathy in savage attacks on him through the press, 
accusing him of utterly lacking character and princi- 
ple, and even of writing under the influence of venal 
motives. To these attacks Heine remained absolutely 
mute — from contempt, according to his own account; 
but the retort, which he resolutely refrained from mak- 
ing during Borne's life, comes in this volume, published 
after his death, with the concentrated force of long- 
gathering thunder. The utterly inexcusable part of 
the book is the caricature of Borne's friend, Madame 
Wohl, and the scurrilous insinuations concerning Borne's 
domestic life. It is said, we know not with how much 
truth, that Heine had to answer for these in a duel with 



HEINRICH HEINE. 95 

Madame Wohl's husband, and that, after receiving a 
serious wound, he promised to withdraw the offensive 
matter from a future edition. That edition, however, 
has not been called for. Whatever else we may think 
of the book, it is impossible to deny its transcendent 
talent — the dramatic vigor with which Borne is made 
present to us, the critical acumen with which he is 
characterized, and the wonderful play of wit, pathos, 
and thought which runs through tlie whole. But we 
will let Heine speak for himself ; and, first, we will 
give part of his graphic description of the way in which 
Borne's mind and manners grated on his taste : 

" To the disgust which, iu intercourse with Borne, I was in dan- 
ger of feeling towards those who surrounded him, was added the 
annoyance I felt from his perpetual talk about politics. Nothing 
but political argument, and again political argument, even at table, 
where he managed to hunt me out. At dinner, when I so gladly 
forget all the vexations of the world, he spoiled the best dishes for 
me by his patriotic gall, which he poured as a bitter sauce over 
everything. CalFs feet, a la maitre d'hotel, then my innocent bonne 
houclie, he comjiletely spoiled for me by Job's tidings from German}^, 
which he scraped together out of the most unreliable newspapers. 
And then his accursed remarks, which spoiled one's appetite ! . . . 
This was a sort of table-talk which did not greatly exhilarate me, 
and I avenged myself by affecting an excessive, almost impas- 
sioned indifference for the objects of Borne's enthusiasm. For 
example, Borne was indignant that immediately on my arrival in 
Paris I had nothing better to do than to write for German papers 
a long account of the Exhibition of Pictures. I omit all discussion 
as to whether that interest in art which induced me to undertake 
this work was so utterly irreconcilable with the revolutionary in- 
terests of the day ; but Borne saw in it a proof of my indifference 
towards the sacred cause of humanity, and I could in my turn spoil 
the taste of his patriotic Sauerkraut for him by talking all dinner- 
time of nothing but pictures, of Robert's Reapers, Horace Veruet's 



96 GERMAN wit: 

Jiulith, and Scheffer's Fnust. . . . That I never tLonglit it worth 
while to discuss my political principles with him it is needless to 
say ; and once when he declared that he had found a contradiction 
in my writings, I satisfied myself with the ironical answer, ' You 
are mistaken, mon cher ; such contradictions never occur in my 
works, for always before I begin to write I read over the statement 
of my political principles in my previous writings, that I may not 
contradict myself, and that no one may be able to reproach me 
w ith apostasy from my liberal principles.' " 

And here is his own account of the spirit in which 
tlie book was written: 

*' I was never Borne's friend, nor was I ever his enemy. The 
displeasure which he could often excite in me was never very im- 
portant, and he atoned for it sufficiently by the cold silence which 
I opposed to all his accusations and raillery. While he lived I 
wrote not a line against him, I never thought about him, I ignored 
him completely ; and that enraged him beyond measure. If I now 
speak of him, I do so neither out of enthusiasm nor out of uneasi- 
ness \ I am conscious of the coolest imi^artiality. I write hero 
neither an apology nor a critique, and as in painting the man I go 
on my own observation, the image I present of him ought, perhaps, 
to be regarded as a real portrait. And such a monument is due to 
him — to the great wrestler who, in the arena of our political 
games, wrestled so courageously, and earned, if not the laurel, cer- 
tainly the crown of oak leaves. I give an image with his true 
features, without idealization — the more like him the more honor- 
able for his memory. He was neither a genius nor a hero : he was 
no Olympian god. He was a man, a denizen of this earth ; he was 
a good writer and a great patriot. . . . Beautiful, delicious peace, 
which I feel at this moment in the depths of my soul ! thou reward- 
est me sufficiently for everything I have done and for everything I 
have despised. = . . I shall defend myself neither from the reproach 
of indifference nor from the suspicion of venality. I have for 
years, during the life of the insinuator, held such self-justification 
unworthy of me ; now even decency demands silence. That would 



HEINRICH HEINE. 97 

be a frightful spectacle! — polemics between Death and Exilol 
Dost thou stretch out to me a beseeching hand from the grave ? 
Without rancor I reach mine towards thee. . . . See how noble it is 
and pure ! It was never soiled by pressing the hands of the mob, 
any more than by the impure gold of the people's enemy. In 
reality thou hast never injured me. ... In all thy insinuations 
there is not a louis d^w's worth of truth." 

In one of these years Heine was married, and, in def- 
erence to the sentiments of his wife, married according 
to the rites of the Catholic Church. On this fact busy 
rumor afterwards founded the story of his conversion 
to Catholicism, and could, of course, name the day and 
the spot on which he abjured Protestantism. In his 
" Gestiindnisse " Heine publishes a denial of this rumor; 
less, he says, for the sake of depriving the Catholics of 
the solace they may derive from their belief in a new 
convert, than in order to cut oft' from another party the 
more spiteful satisfaction of bewailing his instability : 

" That statement of time and place was entirely correct. I was 
actually on the specified day in the specified church, which was, 
moreover, a Jesuit church — namely, St. Sulpice ; and I then went 
through a religious act. But this act was no odious abjuration, 
but a very innocent conjugation ; that is to say, my marriage, al- 
ready performed according to the civil law, there received the ec- 
clesiastical consecration, because my wife, whose family are stanch 
Catholics, would not have thought her marriage sacred enough 
without such a ceremony. And I would on no account cause this 
beloved being any uneasiness or disturbance in her religious views." 

For sixteen years — from 1831 to 1847 — Heine lived 

that rapid, concentrated life which is known only in 

Paris ; but tlien, alas ! stole on the " days of darkness," 

and they were to be man jp In 1847 he felt the ap- 

5 



98 GERMAN wit; 

proach of the terrible spinal disease which has for seven 
years chained him to his bed in acute suffering. The 
last time he went out of doors, he tells us, was in May, 

1848: 

"With difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre^ and I almost 
sank down as I entered the magnificent hall where the ever- 
blessed goddess of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, stands on her 
pedestal. At her feet I lay loug^ and wept so bitterly that a stone 
mnst have pitied me. The goddess looked compassionately on 
me, but at the same time disconsolately, as if she would say : Dost 
thou not see, then, that I have no arms, and thus cannot help 
thee r 

Since 1848, then, this poet, whom the lovely objects 
of Nature have always " haunted like a passion," has 
not descended from the second story of a Parisian 
house; this man of hungry intellect has been shut out 
from all direct observation of life, all contact with so- 
ciety, except such as is derived from visitors to his sick- 
room. The terrible nervous disease has affected his 
eyes ; the sight of one is utterly gone, and he can only 
raise the lid of the other by lifting it with his finger. 
Opium alone is the beneficent genius that stills his pain. 
We hardly know whether to call it an alleviation or 
an intensification of the torture that Heine retains his 
mental vigor, his poetic imagination, and his incisive 
wit; for if his intellectual activity fills up a blank, it 
widens the sphere of suffering. His brother described 
him in 1851 as still, in moments when the hand of pain 
was not too heavy on him, the same Heinrich Heine, 
poet and satirist by turns. In such moments, he would 
narrate the strangest things in the gravest manner. 
But when he came to an end, he would roguishly lift up 
the lid of his right eye with his finger to see the impres- 



HEINEICH HEINE. 99 

sion he had produced ; and if his audience had been 
listening with a serious face, he would break into Ho- 
meric laughter. We liave other proof than personal 
testimony that Heine's disease allows his genius to re- 
tain much of its energy, in the " Roraanzero," a volume 
of poems published in 1851, and written chiefly during 
the first three years of his illness ; and in the first vol- 
ume of the " Yermischte Schriften," also the product of 
recent years. Yery plaintive is the poet's own descrip- 
tion of his condition, in the epilogue to the " Boman- 
zero :" 

" Do I really exist ? My body is so shrunken that I am hardly 
anything hut a voice ; and my bed reminds me of the singiug grave 
of the magician Merlin, -which lies iu the forest of Brozeliand, in 
Brittany, under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames towards 
heaven. Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that 
moves their branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf rustles 
about my mattress-grave iu Paris, where early aud late I hear 
nothing but the rolling of vehicles, hammering, quarrelliug, and 
piano - strumming. A grave without repose, death without the 
privileges of the dead, who have no debts to pay, and need write 
neither letters nor books — that is a piteous condition. Long ago 
the measure has been taken for my coffin aud for my necrology ; 
but I die so slowly that the process is tedious for me as well as 
my friends. But patience ; everything has an end. You will one 
day find the booth closed where the puppet-show of my humor has 
so often delighted you." 

As early as 1850, it was rumored that since Heine's 
illness a change had taken place in his religious views ; 
and as rumor seldom stops short of extremes, it was 
soon said that he had become a thorough pietist. Catho- 
lics and Protestants by turns claiming him as a convert. 
Such a change in so uncompromising an iconoclast, in 
a man who had been so zealous in his negations as 



100 GERMAN wit: 

Heine, naturally excited considerable sensation in the 
camp he was supposed to have quitted, as well as in 
that he was supposed to have joined. In the second 
volume of the "Salon," and in the "Romantische 
Schule," written in 1834 and 1835, the doctrine of Pan- 
theism is dwelt on with a fervor and unmixed serious- 
ness which show that Pantheism was then an animating 
faith to Heine, and he attacks what he considers the 
false spiritualism and asceticism of Christianity as the 
enemy of true beauty in art, and of social well-being. 
Now, however, it was said that Heine had recanted all 
his heresies ; but from the fact that visitors to his sick- 
room brought away very various impressions as to his 
actual religious views, it seemed probable that his love 
of mystification had found a tempting opportunity for 
exercise on this subject, and that, as one of his friends 
said, he was not inclined to pour out unmixed wine to 
those who asked for a sample out of mere curiosity. 
At length, in the epilogue to the '^ Romanzero," dated 
1851, there appeared, amid much mystifying banter, a 
declaration that he had embraced Theism and the belief 
in a future life ; and what chiefly lent an air of serious- 
ness and reliability to this affirmation was the fact that 
he took care to accompany it with certain negations: 

" As concerns myself, I can boast of no particular progress in 
politics ; I adhered (after 1848) to the same democratic principles 
which had the homage of my youth, and for which I have ever 
since glowed with increasing fervor. In theolegy, on the contrary, 
I must accuse myself of retrogression, since, as I have already con- 
fessed, I returned to the old superstition — to a personal God. 
This fact is, once for all, not to be stifled, as many enlightened and 
well-meaning friends would fain have had it. But I must ex- 
pressly contradict the report that my retrograde movement has 



IIEINRICH HEINE. 101 

carried me as far as to the threshold of a church, and that I have 
even been received into her lap. No : my religious convictions 
and views have remained free from any tincture of ecclesiasticism ; 
no chiming of bells has allured me, no altar-candles have dazzled 
me. I have dallied with no dogmas, and have not utterly re- 
nounced my reason." 

This sounds like a serious statement. But what shall 
we say to a convert who plays with his newly acquired 
belief in a future life as Heine does in the very next 
page ? He says to his reader : 

*' Console thyself; we shall meet again in a better world, where 
I also mean to write thee better books. I take for granted that 
my health will there be improved, and that Swedenborg has not 
deceived me. He relates, namely, with great confidence, that we 
shall peacefully carry on our old occupations in the other world, 
just as we have done in this ; that we shall there preserve our in- 
dividuality unaltered, and that death will produce no particular 
change in our organic development. Swedenborg is a thoroughly 
honorable fellow, and quite worthy of credit in what he tells us 
about the other world, where he saw with his own eyes the per- 
sons who had played a great part on our earth. Most of them, he 
Bays, remained unchanged, and busied themselves with the same 
things as formerly ; they remained stationary, were old-fashioned, 
rococo — which now and then produced a ludicrous effect. For ex- 
ample, our dear Dr. Martin Luther kept fast by his doctriue of 
Grace, about which he had for three hundred years daily written 
down the same mouldy arguments — ^just in the same way as the 
late Baron Ekstein, who during twenty years printed in the 
Allgemeine Zeitung one and the same article, perpetually chewing 
over again the old cud of Jesuitical doctrine. But, as we have 
said, all persons who once figured here below were not found 
by Swedenborg in such a state of fossil immutability : many had 
considerably developed their character, both for good and evil, 
iu the other world; and this gave rise to some singular results. 
Some who had been heroes and saiuts on earth had there sunk into 
scamps and good-for-nothings ; and there were examples, too, of a 



102 GERMAN wit: 

contrary transformatiou. For instance, the fumes of self-conceit 
mounted to St. Anthony's head when he learned what immense 
veneration and adoration had been paid to him by all Christen- 
dom ; and he who here below withstood the most terrible tempta- 
tions, was now qnite an impertinent rascal and dissolute gallows- 
bird, who vied with his pig in rolling himself in the mud. The 
chaste Susanna, from having been excessively vain of her virtue, 
which she thought indomitable, came to a shameful fall, and she 
who once so gloriously resisted the two old men, was a victim to 
the seductions of the young Absalom, the son of David. On the 
contrary, Lot's daughters had in the lapse of time become very 
virtuous, and passed in the other world for models of propriety : 
the old man, alas ! had stuck to the wine-flask." 

In his " Gestandnisse," the retractation of former opin- 
ions and profession of Theism are renewed, but in a 
strain of irony that repels our sympathy and baffles our 
psychology. Yet what strange, deep pathos is mingled 
with the audacity of the following passage ! 

" What avails it me, that enthusiastic youths and maidens 
crown my marble bust with lanrel, when the withered hands of 
an aged nurse are pressing Spanish flies behind my ears ? What 
avails it me, that all the roses of Shiraz glow and waft incense for 
me ? Alas ! Shiraz is two thousand miles from the Rue d' Amster- 
dam, where, in the wearisome loneliness of my sick-room, I get no 
scent except it be, perhaps, the perfume of warmed towels. Alas ! 
God's satire weighs heavily on me. The great Author of the uni- 
verse, the Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating^ 
with crushing force, to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, 
how my wittiest sarcasms are only pitiful attempts at jesting in 
comparison with his, and how miserably I am beneath him in hu- 
mor, in colossal mockery." 

For our ow^n part, we regard the paradoxical irrever- 
ence with which Heine professes his theoretical rever- 
ence as pathological, as the diseased exhibition of a pre- 
dominant tendency urged into anomalous action by the 



HEINRICH HEINE. 103 

pressure of pain and mental privation — as the delirium 
of wit starved of its proper nourishment. It is not for 
us to condemn, who have never had the same burden 
laid on us ; it is not for pigmies at their ease to criticise 
tlie writliings of the Titan chained to the rock. 

On one other point we must touch before quitting 
Heine's personal history. There is a standing accusa- 
tion against him in some quarters of wanting political 
principle, of wishing to denationalize himself, and of 
indulging in insults against his native country. What- 
ever ground may exist for these accusations, that 
ground is not, so far as we see, to be found in his writ- 
ings. He may not have much faith in German revolu- 
tions and revolutionists ; experience, in his case as in 
that of others, may have thrown his millennial anticipa- 
tions into more distant perspective; but we see no evi- 
dence that he has ever swerved from his attachment to 
the principles of freedom, or written anything which to 
a philosophic mind is incompatible with true patriotism. 
He has expressly denied the report that he wished to 
become naturalized in France ; and his yearning tow- 
ards his native land and the accents of his native lan- 
guage is expressed with a pathos the more reliable from 
the fact that he is sparing in such effusions. We do 
not see why Heine's satire of the blunders and foibles 
of his fellow-countrymen should be denounced as the 
crime of Use pair ie^ 2iny more than the political carica- 
tures of any other satirist. The real offences of Heine 
are his occasional coarseness and his unscrupulous per- 
sonalities, which are reprehensible, not because they 
are directed against his fellow-countrymen, but because 
they are personalities. That these offences have their 



104 GERMAN wit: 

precedents in men whose memory the world delights to 
honor does not remove their turpitude, but it is a fact 
which should modify our condemnation in a particular 
case — unless, indeed, we are to deliver our judgments 
on a principle of compensation, making up for our in- 
dulgence in one direction by our severity in another. 
On this ground of coarseness and personality, a true 
bill may be found against Heine — not, we think, on the 
ground that he has laughed at what is laughable in his 
compatriots. Here is a specimen of the satire under 
which we suppose German patriots wince : 

^' Rheuish Bavaria was to be the starting-point of the German 
revolution. Zwiebriicken was the Bethlehem in which the infant 
Saviour — Freedom — lay in the cradle, and gave whimpering prom- 
ise of redeeming the world. Near his cradle bellowed many an ox, 
who afterwards, when his horns were reckoned on, showed himself 
a very harmless brute. It was confidently believed that the Ger- 
man revolution would begin in Zwiebriicken, and everything was 
there ripe for an outbreak. But, as has been hinted, the tender- 
heartedness of some persons frustrated that illegal undertaking. 
For example, among the Bipontine consj^irators there was a tre- 
mendous braggart, who was always loudest in his rage, who boiled 
over with the hatred of tyranny, and this man was fixed on to 
strike the first blow, by cutting down a sentinel who kept an im- 
portant post. . . . 'What!' cried the man, when this order was 
given him — 'what! — me ! Can you expect so horrible, so blood- 
thirsty an act of me ? I — I, kill an innocent sentinel ? I, who am 
father of a family ! And this sentinel is perhaps also father of a 
family. One father of a family kill another father of a family ? 
Yes! Kill— murder!'" 

In political matters, Heine, like all men whose intel- 
lect and taste predominate too far over their impulses 
to allow of their becoming partisans, is offensive alike 



HEINRICH HEINE. 105 

to the aristocrat and the democrat. By the one he is 
denounced as a man who holds incendiary principles, 
by the other as a half-hearted " trimmer." He has no 
sympathy, as he says, with "that vague, barren pathos, 
that useless effervescence of enthusiasm, which plunges, 
witli the spirit of a martyr, into an ocean of generali- 
ties, and which a,lways reminds me of the American 
sailor, who had so fervent an enthusiasm for General 
Jackson that he at last sprang from the top of a mast 
into the sea, crying, ''^Idiefo?' General Jackson P"^ 

"But thou liest, Brutns, thou liest, Cassius, and thou, too, liest, 
Asinius, iu maintaining that my ridicule attacks those ideas which 
are the precious acquisition of Humanity, and for which I myself 
have so striven and suffered. No ! for the very reason that those 
ideas constantly hover before the poet in glorious splendor and maj- 
esty, he is the more irresistibly overcome by laughter when he 
sees how rudely, awkwardly, and clumsily those ideas are seized 
and mirrored in the contracted minds of contemporaries. . . . There 
are mirrors which have so rough a surface that even an Apollo re- 
flected in them becomes a caricature, and excites our laughter. 
But ive laugh then only at the caricature, not at the god,'' 

For the rest, why should we demand of Heine that he 
should be a hero, a patriot, a solemn prophet, any more 
than we should demand of a gazelle that it should draw 
well in harness? Nature has not made him of her 
sterner stuff, not of iron and adamant, but of pollen of 
flowers, the juice of the grape, and Puck's mischievous 
brain, plenteously mixing also the dews of kindly affec- 
tion and the gold-dust of noble thoughts. It is, after 
all, a tribute which his enemies pay him when they utter 
their bitterest dictum ; namely, that he is " nur Dich- 

ter "---only a poet. Let us accept this point of view for 

7 5* 



106 GERMAN wit: 

the present, and, leaving all consideration of him as a 
man, look at him simply as a poet and literary artist. 

Heine is essentially a lyric poet. The finest products 
of his genius are 

'' Short swallow-flights of song that dip 
Their wiugs in tears, and skim away ;" 

and they are so emphatically songs, that, in reading 
them, we feel as if each must have a twin melody born 
in the same moment and hy the same inspiration. Heine 
is too impressible and mercurial for any sustained pro- 
duction : even in his short lyrics his tears sometimes 
pass into laughter, and his laughter into tears ; and his 
longer poems, " Atta Troll " and " Deutschland," are 
full of Ariosto-like transitions. His song has a wide 
compass of notes: he can take us to the shores of the 
Northern Sea and thrill us by the sombre sublimity of 
his pictures and dreamy fancies; he can draw forth our 
tears by the voice he gives to our own sorrows, or to the 
sorrows of " Poor Peter ;" he can throw a cold shudder 
over us by a mysterious legend, a ghost-story, or a still 
more ghastly rendering of hard reality; he can charm 
us by a quiet idyl, shake us with laughter at his over- 
flowing fun, or give us a piquant sensation of surprise 
by the ingenuity of his transitions from the lofty to the 
ludicrous. This last power is not, indeed, essentially 
poetical ; but only a poet can use it with the same suc- 
cess as Heine, for only a poet can poise our emotion 
and expectation at such a height as to give effect to tlie 
sudden fall. Heine's greatest power as a poet lies in his 
simple pathos, in the ever-varied but always natural ex- 
pression he has given to the tender emotions. We may, 



HEINKICH HEINE. 107 

perhaps, indicate this phase of his genius by refer- 
ring to Wordsworth's beautiful little poem, " She dwelt 
among the untrodden ways;" the conclusion — 

" She dwelt alone, and few could know 
When Lucy ceased to be ; 
But she is in her grave, and oh ! 
The difference to me " — 

is entirely in Heine's manner; and so is Tennyson's 
poem of a dozen lines, called " Circumstance." Both 
these poems have Heine's pregnant simplicity. But, 
lest this comparison should mislead, we must say that 
there is no general resemblance between either Words- 
worth or Tennyson and Heine. Their greatest quali- 
ties lie quite away from the light, delicate lucidity, the 
easy, rippling music, of Heine's style. The distinctive 
charm of his lyrics may best be seen by comparing them 
with Goethe's. Both have the same masterly, finished 
simplicity and rhythmic grace; but there is more 
tjiought mingled with Goethe's feeling ; his lyrical 
genius is a vessel that draws more water than Heine's, 
and thougli it seems to glide along with equal ease, we 
have a sense of greater weight and force accompanying 
the grace of its movement. But, for this very reason, 
Heine touches our hearts more strongly ; his songs are 
all music and feeling ; they are like birds that not only 
enchant us with their delicious notes, but nestle against 
71S with their soft breasts, and make us feel the agitated 
beating of their hearts. He indicates a whole sad his- 
tory in a single quatrain : there is not an image in it, 
not a thought ; but it is beautiful, simple, and perfect 
as a "big, round tear;" it is pure feeling breathed in 
Dure music: 



l08 GERMAN wit: 

" Anfangs woUt' ich fast verzagen 
Und ich glaubt' ich trng es nie, 
Und ich hah' es doch getragen, — 
Aber fragt mich nur uicht, wie." * 

lie excels equally in the more imaginative expression 
of feeling: he represents it by a brief image, like a 
finely cut cameo; be expands it into a mysterious 
dream, or dramatizes it in a little story, half ballad, 
lialf idyl; and in all these forms his art is so perfect 
that we never have a sense of artificiality or of unsuc- 
cessful effort ; but all seems to have developed itself by 
the same beautiful necessity that bi'ings forth vine- 
leaves and grapes and the natural curls of childhood. 
Of Heine's humorous poetry " Deutschland " is the 
most charming specimen — charming, especially, because 
its wit and humor grow out of a rich loam of thought. 
" Atta Troll " is more original, more various, more fan- 
tastic; but it is too great a strain on the imagination to 
be a creneral favorite. We have said that feelinoj is the 
element in which Heine's poetic genius habitually 
floats, but he can occasionally soar to a higher region, 
and impart deep significance to picturesque symbolism ; 
he can flash a sublime thought over the past and into 
the future ; he can pour forth a lofty strain of hope or 
indignation. Few could forget, after once hearing 
them, the stanzas at the close of "Deutschland," in 
which he warns the King of Prussia not to incur the 
irredeemable hell which the injured poet can create for 
him — the singing flames of a Dante's terza rima! 

* At first I was almost in despair, and I thought I could never 
bear it, and yet I have borne it — only do not ask me howf 



HEINRICH HEINE. 109 

" Kennst du die Holle des Dante nicht, 
Die schrecklichen Terzetteu ? 
Wen da der Dicbter liiueingesperrt 
Den kaun kein Gott mebr retten. 

Kein Gott, kein Heilaud, erlost ihn je 
Aus diesen siiigenden flammen ! 
Nimm dicli in Aclit, das wir dicb nicht 
Zu solcher Holle verdammen." * 

As a prosaist, Heine is, in one point of view, even 
more distinguished than as a poet. The German lan- 
guage easily lends itself to all the purposes of poetry ; 
like the ladies of the middle ages, it is gracious and 
compliant to the Troubadours. But as these same la- 
dies were often crusty and repulsive to their unmusical 
mates, so the German language generally appears awk- 
ward and unmanageable in the hands of prose writers. 
Indeed the number of really fine German prosaists be- 
fore Heine would hardly have exceeded the numerating 
powers of a New Hollander, who can count three and 
no more. Persons the most familiar with German 
prose testify that there is an extra fatigue in reading 
it, just as we feel an extra fatigue from our walk when 
it takes us over ploughed clay. But in Heine's hands 
German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, be- 
comes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, 
metallic, brilliant ; it is German in an allotropic condi- 

* It is not fair to the English reader to indulge in German quo- 
tations, but in our opinion poetical translations are usually worse 
than valueless. For those who think differently, however, we may 
mention that Mr. Stores Smith has published a modest little book, 
containing "Selections from the Poetry of Heinrich Heine," and 
that a meritorious (American) translation of Heine's complete 
storks, by Charles Leland, is now appearing in. shilling numbers. 



110 GERMAN wit: 

tion. No dreary, labyrinthine sentences in which you 
find " no end in wandering mazes lost ;" no chains of 
adjectives in linked liarshness long drawn out ; no di- 
gressions thrown in as parentheses ; but crystalline def- 
initeness and clearness, fine and varied rhythm, and all 
that delicate precision, all those felicities of word and 
cadence, which belong to the highest order of prose. 
And Heine has proved — what Madame de Stael seems 
to have doubted — that it is possible to be witty in Ger- 
man ; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that 
German was pre-eminently the language of wit, so flex- 
ible, so subtile, so piquant does it become under his man- 
ao-ement. He is far more an artist in prose than Goethe. 
He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm devel- 
opment which belong to Goethe's style, for they are 
foreio^n to his mental character ; but he excels Goethe 
in susceptibility to the manifold qualities of prose, and 
in mastery over its effects. Heine is full of variety, of 
light and shadow : he alternates between epigrammatic 
pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and daring piquan- 
cy ; and athwart all these there runs a vein of sadness, 
tenderness, and grandeur which reveals the poet. He 
continually throws out those finely chiselled sayings 
which stamp themselves on the memory, and become 
familiar by quotation. For example : " The People 
have time enough, they are immortal ; kings only are 
mortal." "Wherever a great soul utters its thoughts, 
there is Golgotha." " Nature wanted to see how she 
looked, and she created Goethe." " Only the man who 
has known bodily suffering is truly a Tuan ^ his limbs 
have their Passion-history, they are spiritualized." He 
calls Bubens " this Flemish Titan, the wings of whose 



HEINRICH HEINE. Ill 

genius were so strong that he soared as high as the snn, 
in spite of the hundred-weight of Dutch cheeses that 
hung on his legs." Speaking of Borne's dislike to the 
calm creations of the true artist, he says, "He was like 
a child which, insensible to the glowing significance of 
a Greek statue, only touches the marble and complains 
of cold." 

The most poetic and specifically humorous of Heine's 
prose writings are the " Reisebilder." The comparison 
with Sterne is inevitable here ; but Heine does not suf- 
fer from it, for if he falls below Sterne in raciness of 
humor, he is far above him in poetic sensibility and in 
reach and variety of thought. Heine's humor is never 
persistent, it never flows on long in eas}^ g^ycty and 
drollery ; where it is not swelled by the tide of poetic 
feeling, it is continually dashing down the precipice of 
a witticism. It is not broad and unctuous ; it is aerial 
and sprite-like, a momentary resting-place between his 
poetry and his wit. In the " Reisebilder " he runs 
through the whole gamut of his powers, and gives us 
every hue of thought, from the wildly droll and fantas- 
tic to the sombre and the terrible. Here is a passage 
almost Dantesque in its conception : 

"Alas! one ouglit in truth to write against no one in this world. 
Each of ns is sick enough in this great lazaretto, and many a polem- 
ical writing reminds me involuntarily of a revolting quarrel, in a 
little hospital at Cracow, of which I chanced to be a witness, and 
where it was horrible to hear how the patients mockingly re- 
proached each other with their infirmities : how one who was wast- 
ed by consumption jeered at another who was bloated by dropsy ; 
how one laughed at another's cancer in the nose, and this one 
again at his neighbor's locked-jaw or squint, until at last the de- 
lirious fever-patient sprang out of bed and tore away the coverings 



112 GERMAN wit: 

from the wounded bodies of his companionsj and nothing was to bo 
seen bnt hideous misery and mutilation." 

And how tine is the transition in the very next chap- 
ter, where, after quoting the Homeric description of the 
feasting gods, he says: 

"Then suddenly approached, panting, a pale Jew, with drops of 
blood on his brow, with a crown of thorns on his head, and a great 
cross laid on his shoulders ; and he threw the cross on the high 
table of the gods, so that the golden cups tottered, and the gods 
became dumb and pale, and grew even paler, till they at last melted 
away into vapor." 

The richest specimens of Heine'b wit are perhaps to 
be found in the works which liave appeared since the 
" Reisebilder." The years, if they have intensified his 
satirical bitterne&s, have also given his wit a finer edge 
and polish. His sarcasms are so subtilely prepared and so 
slyly allusive, that they may often escape readers whose 
sense of wit is not very acute; but for those who de- 
light in the subtile and delicate flavors of style, there can 
hardly be any wit more irresistible than Heine's. We 
may measure its force by the degree in which it has 
subdued the German language to its purposes, and made 
that language brilliant in spite of a long hereditary trans- 
mission of dulness. As one of the most harmless ex- 
amples of his satire, take this on a man who has certain- 
ly had his share of adulation : 

" Assuredly it is far from my purpose to depreciate M. Victor 
Cousin. The titles of this celebrated philosopher even lay me un- 
der an obligation to praise him. He belongs to that living pan- 
theon of France which we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs 
rest on the velvet benches of the Luxembourg. I must indeed stern- 
ly repress all private feelings which might seduce me into an ex- 
jCessiye enthusiasm. Otherwise I might be suspected of servility ; 



HEINRICH HEINE. 113 

for M. Cousin is very influential in the state by means of his posi- 
tion and his tongue. This consideration might even move me to 
speak of his faults as frankly as of his virtues. Will he himself 
disapprove of this ? Assuredly not. I know that we cannot do 
higher honor to great minds than when we throw as strong a light 
on their demerits as on their merits. When we sing the praises of 
a Hercules, we must also mention that he once laid aside the lion's 
skin and sat down to the distaff: what then ? he remains notwith- 
standing a Hercules ! So when we relate similar circumstances con- 
cerning M. Cousin, we must nevertheless add, with discriminat- 
ing eulogy : M. Cousin, if he has sometimes sat twaddling at the distaff, 
has never laid aside the lion^s shin. . . . It is true that, having been 
suspected of demagogy, he spent some time in a German prison, 
just as Lafayette and Richard Cceur de Lion. But that M. Cousin 
there in his leisure hours studied Kant's * Critique of Pure Reason' 
is to be doubted on three grounds : First, this book is written in 
German. Secondly, in order to read this book, a man must under- 
stand German. Thirdly, M. Cousin does not understand German. 
... I fear I am passing unawares from the sweet waters of praise 
into the bitter ocean of blame. Yes, on one account I cannot re- 
frain from bitterly blaming M. Cousin ; namely, that he who loves 
trutTi far more than he loves Plato and Tennemau, is unjust to him- 
self when he wants to persuade us that he has borrowed something 
from the i^hilosophy of Schelling and Hegel. Against this self-accu- 
sation, I must take M. Cousin under my protection. On my word and 
conscience ! this honorable man has not stolen a jot from Schelling 
and Hegel, and if he brought home anything of theirs, it was merely 
their friendship. That does honor to his heart. But there are 
many instances of such self- accusation in psychology. I knew a 
man who declared that he had stolen silver spoons at the king's 
table ; and yet we all knew that the poor devil had never been pre- 
sented at court, and accused himself of stealing these spoons to 
make us believe that he had been a guest at the palace. No ! In 
German philosophy M. Cousin has always kept the sixth command- 
ment ; here he has never pocketed a single idea, not so much as a 
salt-spoon of an idea. All witnesses agree in attesting that in thia 
respect M. Cousin is honor itself. ... I prophesy to you that the 



114 GERMAN wit: HEINRICH HEINE. 

renown of M. Cousin, like the French Revolution, will go round the 
world ! I hear some one wickedly add : Undeniably the renown of 
M. Cousin is going round the world, and it has ah'eady taken its de- 
parture from France" 

The following "symbolical myth" about Louis Phi- 
lippe is very characteristic of Heine's manner : 

" I remember very well that immediately on ray arrival (in Paris) 
I hastened to the Palais Royal to see Louis Philippe. The friend 
who conducted me told me that the king now appeared on the ter- 
race only at stated hours, but that formerly he was to be seen at 
any time for five francs. 'For five francs!' I cried, with amaze- 
ment ; ' does he then show himself for money V No ; but he is 
shown for money, and it happens in this way : There is a society of 
claqueurs, marcliands de contre-marques, and such riif-raff, who offered 
every foreigner to show him the king for five francs : if he would 
give ten francs, he might see the king raise his eyes to heaven, and 
lay his hand protestingly on his heart; if he would give twenty 
francs, the king would sing the Marseillaise. If the foreigner gave 
five francs, they raised a loud cheering under the king's windows, 
and his majesty appeared on the terrace, bowed, and retired. If 
ten francs, they shouted still louder, and gesticulated as if they had 
been possessed, when the king appeared, who then, as a sign of 
silent emotion, raised his eyes to heaven, and laid his hand on his 
heart. English visitors, however, would sometimes spend as much 
as twenty francs, and then the enthusiasm mounted to the highest 
pitch : no sooner did the king appear on the terrace, than the Mar- 
seillaise was struck up and roared out frightfully, until Louis Phi- 
lippe, perhaps only for the sake of putting an end to the singing, 
bowed, laid his hand on his heart, and joined in the Marseillaise. 
Whether, as is asserted, he beat time with his foot, I cannot say." 



EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING. 

Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral stand- 
ard not higher than the average, some rhetorical afflu- 
ence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in 
which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most 
easily attain power and reputation in English society ? 
Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smatter- 
ing of science and learning will pass for profound in- 
struction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, 
bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as 
God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangel- 
ical preacher ; he will then find it possible to reconcile 
small ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge 
with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a 
high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun practical 
extremes and be ultra only in what is purely theoretic ; 
let him be stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian 
on fasting; unflinching in insisting on the eternity of 
punishment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial 
comforts of time ; ardent and imaginative on the pre- 
millennial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious tow- 
ards every other infringement of the status quo. Let 
him fish for souls not with the bait of inconvenient sin- 
gularity, but with the drag-net of comfortable conform- 
ity. Let him be hard and literal in his interpretation 
only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads of unbe- 



116 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 

lieversand adversaries, but when the letter of the Scrip- 
tures presses too closely on the genteel Christianity of 
the nineteenth century, let him use his spiritualizing 
alembic and disperse it into impalpable ether. Let him 
preach less of Christ than of Antichrist ; let him be less 
definite in showing what sin is than in showing who is 
the Man of Sin, less expansive on the blessedness of 
faith than on the accursedness of infidelity. Above all, 
let him set up as an interpreter of prophecy, and rival 
"Moore's Almanack "in the prediction of political events, 
tickling the interest of hearers who are but moderately 
spiritual by showing how the Holy Spirit has dictated 
problems and charades for their benefit, and how, if 
they are ingenious enough to solve these, they may have 
their Christian graces nourished by learning precisely 
to whom they may point as the "horn that had ej^es," 
" the lying prophet," and the " unclean spirits." In 
this way he will draw men to him by the strong cords 
of their passions, made reason-proof by being baptized 
with the name of piety. In this way he may gain a 
metropolitan pulpit ; the avenues to his church will be 
as crowded as the passages to the opera ; he has but to 
print his prophetic sermons and bind them in lilac and 
gold, and they will adorn the drawing-room table of all 
evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious 
"light reading" the demonstration that the prophecy 
of the locusts whose sting is in their tail, is fulfilled in 
the fact of the Turkish commander's having taken a 
horse's tail for his standard, and that the French are the 
very frogs predicted in the Revelation. 

Pleasant to the clerical flesh under such circumstances 
is the arrival of Sunday ! Somewhat at a disadvantage 



DE. GUMMING, 117 

d 'a ring the week, in the presence of working-daj inter- 
ests and lay splendors, on Sunday the preacher becomes 
the cynosure of a thousand eyes, and predominates at 
once over the Amphitryon with whom he dines, and the 
most captious member of his church or vestry. He has 
an immense advantage over all other public speakers. 
The platform orator is subject to the criticism of hisses 
and groans. Counsel for the plaintiff expects the re- 
tort of counsel for the defendant. The honorable gen- 
tleman on one side of the House is liable to have his 
facts and figures shown up by his honorable friend on 
the opposite side. Even the scientific or literary lect- 
urer, if he is dull or incompetent, may see the best part 
of his audience slip quietly out one by one. But the 
preacher is completely master of the situation : no one 
may hiss, no one may depart. Like the writer of imag- 
inary conversations, he may put what imbecilities he 
pleases into the mouths of his antagonists, and swell with 
triumph when he has refuted them. He may riot in 
gratuitous assertions, confident that no man will con- 
tradict him; he may exercise perfect free-will in logic, 
and invent illustrative experience ; he may give an evan- 
gelical edition of history with the inconvenient facts 
omitted — all this he may do with impunity, certain 
that those of his hearers who are not sympathizing are 
not listening. For the Press has no band of critics who 
go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on 
the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher to make a 
"feature" in their article: the clergy are, practically, 
the most irresponsible of all talkers. For this reason, 
at least, it is well tliat they do not always allow their 
discourses to be merely fugitive, but are often induced 



118 EVANGELICAL TEACHING I 

to fix them in that black and white in which they are 
open to the criticism of any man who has the courage 
and patience to treat them with thorough freedom of 
speech and pen. 

It is because we think this criticism of clerical teach- 
ing desirable for the public good that we devote some 
pages to Dr. dimming. He is, as every one knows, a 
preacher of immense popularity, and of the numerous 
publications in which he perpetuates his pulpit labors, 
all circulate widel^^, and some, according to their title- 
page, have reached the sixteenth thousand. ]^ow our 
opinion of these publications is the very opposite of 
that given by a newspaper eulogist : we do not '' believe 
that the repeated issues of Dr. Cumming's thoughts are 
having a beneficial effect on society," but the reverse ; 
and hence, little inclined as we are to dwell on his 
pages, we think it worth while to do so, for the sake of 
pointing out in them what we believe to be profoundly 
mistaken and pernicious. Of Dr. Gumming personallj^ 
we know absolutely nothing : our acquaintance with 
him is confined to a perusal of his works, our judgment 
of him is founded solely on the manner in which he 
has written himself down on his pages. We know 
neither how he looks nor how he lives. We are igno- 
rant whether, like St. Paul, he has a bodily presence 
that is weak and contemptible, or whether his person is 
as florid and as prone to amplification as his style. For 
aught we know, he may not only have the gift of 
prophecy, but may bestow the profits of all his works 
to feed the poor, and be ready to give his own body 
to be burned with as much alacrity as he infers the 
everlasting burning of Koman Catholics and Piiseyites. 



DE. GUMMING. 119 

Ont of the pulpit he may be a model of justice, truth- 
fulness, and the love that thinketh no evil ; but we are 
obliged to judge of his charity by the spirit we find in 
his sermons, and shall only be glad to learn that his 
practice is, in many respects, an amiable no7i sequitur 
from his teaching. 

Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic 
order. There is not the slightest leaning towards mys- 
ticism in his Christianity — no indication of religious 
raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual communion 
with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic 
view of Justification, and dwells on salvation as a 
scheme rather than as an experience. He insists on 
good works as the sign of justifying faith, as labors to 
be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely repre- 
sents them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a 
soul filled with divine love. He is at home in the ex- 
ternal, the polemical, the historical, the circumstantial, 
and is only episodically devout and practical. The 
great majority of his published sermons are occupied 
with argument or philippic against Romanists and un- 
believers, with "vindications" of the Bible, with the 
political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism of 
public events ; and the devout aspiration, or the spirit- 
ual and practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort 
of fringe in a hurried sentence or two at the end. He 
levels in the demonstration that the Pope is the Man 
uf Sin ; he is copious on the downfall of the Ottoman 
empire; he appears to glow with satisfaction in turning 
a story which tends to show how he abashed an "infi- 
del;" it is a favorite exercise with him to form conject- 



120 EVANGELICAL TEACHIKG : 

ures of the process by which the earth is to be burned 
up, to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce being 
caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, 
Puseyites, and infidels are given over to gnashing of 
teeth. But of really spiritual joys and sorrows, of the 
life and death of Christ as a manifestation of love that 
constrains the soul, of sympathy with that yearning 
over the lost and erring which made Jesus weep over 
Jerusalem, and prompted the sublime prayer, " Father, 
forgive them," of the gentler fruits of the Spirit, and 
the peace of God which passeth understanding — of all 
this we find little trace in Dr. Cumming's discourses. 

His style is in perfect correspondence with this habit 
of mind. Though diffuse, as that of all preachers must 
be, it has rapidity of movement, perfect clearness, and 
some aptness of illustration. He has much of that 
literary talent which makes a good journalist — the 
power of beating out an idea over a large space, and of 
introducing far-fetched a propos. His writings have, 
indeed, no high merit : they have no originality or force 
of thought, no striking felicity of presentation, no 
depth of emotion. Throughout nine volumes we have 
alighted on no passage which impressed us as worth 
extracting and placing among the " beauties "• of evan- 
gelical writers, such as Robert Hall, Foster the Essayist, 
or Isaac Taylor. Everywhere there is commonplace 
cleverness, nowhere a spark of rare thought, of lofty 
sentiment, or pathetic tenderness. We feel ourselves 
in company with a voluble retail talker, whose language 
is exuberant but not exact, and to whom we should never 
think of referring for precise information, or for well- 
digested thought and experience. His argument con- 



DE. CrMMIXG. 121 

tinually slides into wholesale assertion and vague decla- 
mation, and in his love of ornament he frequently 
becomes tawdry. For example, he tells us (" Apoc. 
6ketches," p. 265 j that "Botany weaves around the cross 
her amaranthine garlands; and Xewton comes from 
his starry home, Linnaeus from his flowery resting- 
place, and Werner and Hutton from their subterranean 
graves at the voice of Chahuers, to acknowledge that 
all they learned and elicited in their respective prov- 
inces has only served to show more clearly that Jesus 
of Nazareth is enthroned on the riches of the universe." 
And so prosaic an injunction to his hearers as that they 
should choose a residence within an easy distance of 
church, is magnificently draped by him as an exhorta- 
tion to prefer a house " that basks in the sunshine of 
the countenance of God.'' Like all preachers of his 
class, he is more fertile in imagihative paraphrase than 
in close exposition, and in this way he gives us some 
remarkable fragments of what we may call the romance 
of Scripture, filling up the outline of tlie record with 
an elaborate coloring quite undi-eamed of by more lit- 
eral minds. The serpent, he informs us, said to Eve, 
" Can it be so ? Surely you are mistaken, that God 
hath said you shall die, a creature so fair, so lovely, so 
beautiful. It is impossible. The laws of nature and 
physical science tell you that my interpretation is cor- 
rect ; you shall not die. I can tell you by ray own ex- 
perience as an angel that you shall be as gods, knowing 
good and evil" ("Apoc. Sketches," p. 294). Again, ac- 
cording to Dr. Gumming, Abel had so clear an idea of 
the Incarnation and Atonement that when he offered 
his sacrifice " he must have said, ' I feel myself a guilty 

6 



122 EVAl^GELICAL TEACHING : 

sinner, and that in myself I cannot meet Thee alive; I 
lay on Thine altar this victim, and I shed its blood as 
my testimony that mine should be shed ; and I look for 
forgiveness and undeserved mercy through Him v^ho is 
to bruise the serpent's head, and whose atonement this 
typifies' " (" Occas. Disc," vol. i. p. 23). Indeed, his pro- 
ductions are essentially ephemeral ; he is essentially a 
journalist, who writes sermons instead of leading arti- 
cles; who, instead of venting diatribes against her maj- 
esty's ministers, directs his power of invective against 
Cardinal Wiseman and the Puseyites ; instead of de- 
claiming on public spirit, perorates on the "glory of 
God." We fancy he is called, in the more refined evan- 
gelical circles, an "intellectual preacher;" by the plainer 
sort of Christians, a "flow^ery preacher;" and we are in- 
clined to think that the more spiritually minded class 
of believers, who look with greater anxiety for the 
kingdom of God within them than for the visible ad- 
vent of Christ in 1864, will be likely to find Dr. Cum- 
ming's declamatory flights and historico- prophetical 
exercitations as little better than " clouts o' cauld par- 
ritch." 

Such is our general impression from his writings 
after an attentive perusal. There are some particular 
characteristics which we shall consider more closely, but 
in doing so we must be understood as altogether declin- 
ing any doctrinal discussion. We have no intention to 
consider the grounds of Dr. Cumming's dogmatic sys- 
tem, to examine the principles of his prophetic exegesis, 
or to question his opinion concerning the little horn, 
the river Euphrates, or the seven vials. We identify 
ourselves with no one of the bodies whom he regards 



DE. GUMMING. 123 

it as his special mission to attack : not giving adhesion 
either to Romanism, to Puseyism, or to that anomalous 
combination of opinions which he introduces to us un- 
der the name of infidelity. It is simply as spectators 
that we criticise Dr. Cumming's mode of warfare : as 
spectators concerned less with what he holds to be 
Christian truth tlian with his manner of enforcing that 
truth ; less with the doctrines he teaches than with the 
moral spirit and tendencies of his teaching. 

One of the most striking characteristics of Dr. Cum- 
ming's writings is unscrujpulosity of statement. His 
motto apparently is, Christianitatem, quocunque modo, 
Christianitatein ; and the only system he includes un- 
der the term Christianity is Calvinistic Protestantism. 
Experience has so long shown that the human brain is 
a congenial nidus for inconsistent beliefs, that we do 
not pause to inquire how Dr. Cumming, who attributes 
the conversion of the unbelieving to the Divine Spirit, 
can think it necessary to co-operate with that Spirit by 
argumentative white lies. Nor do we for a moment 
impugn the genuineness of his zeal for Christianity, or 
the sincerity of his conviction that the doctrines he 
preaches are necessary to salvation ; on the contrary, 
we regard the flagrant unveracity found on his pages as 
an indirect result of that conviction — as a result, name- 
ly, of the intellectual and moral distortion of view 
which is inevitably produced by assigning to dogmas, 
based on a very complex structure of evidence, the 
place and authority of first truths. A distinct appre- 
ciation of the value of evidence — in other words, the 
intellectual perception of truth — is more closely allied 
to truthfulness of statement, or the moral quality of 



124 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 

veracity, than is generally admitted. That higliest 
moral habit, the constant preference of truth, both 
theoretically and practically, pre-eminently demands 
the co-operation of the intellect with the impulses — as 
is indicated by the fact that it is only found in any- 
thing like completeness in the highest class of minds. 
And it is commonly seen that, in proportion as religious 
sects believe themselves to be guided by direct inspira- 
tion rather than by a spontaneous exertion of their 
faculties, their sense of truthfulness is misty and con- 
fused. No one can have talked to the more enthusias- 
tic Methodists and listened to their stories of miracles 
without perceiving that they require no other passport 
to a statement than that it accords with their wishes 
and their general conception of God's dealings; nay, 
they regard as a symptom of sinful scepticism an in- 
quiry into the evidence for a story which they think 
unquestionably tends to the glory of God, and in re- 
tailing such stories, new particulars, further tending to 
his glory, are " borne in " upon their minds. Now, 
Dr. Gumming, as we have said, is no enthusiastic piet- 
ist: within a certain circle — within the mill of evan- 
gelical orthodoxy — his intellect is perpetually at work ; 
but that principle of sophistication which our friends 
the Methodists derive from the predominance of their 
pietistic feelings, is involved for him in the doctrine of 
verbal inspiration ; what is for them a state of emotion 
submerging the intellect, is with him a formula impris- 
oning the intellect, depriving it of its proper function — 
the free search for truth — and making it the mere ser- 
v an t-of -all-work ^o a foregone conclusion. Minds fet- 
tered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a 



DR. GUMMING. 125 

proposition whether it is attested bj sufficient evidence, 
but whether it accords with Scripture ; they do not 
search for facts, as such, but for facts that will bear out 
their doctrine. They become accustomed to reject the 
more direct evidence in favor of the less direct, and 
where adverse evidence reaches demonstration they 
must resort to devices and expedients in order to ex- 
plain away contradiction. It is easy to see that this 
mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, 
but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose 
faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the 
precipice of falsehood. 

AYe have entered into this digression for the sake of 
mitigating the inference that is likely to be drawn from 
that characteristic of Dr. Cumraing's works to which we 
have pointed. He is much in the same intellectual con- 
dition as that professor of Padua, who, in order to dis- 
prove Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's satellites, urged 
that as there were only seven metals there could not be 
more than seven planets — a mental condition scarcely 
compatible with candor. And we may well suppose 
that if the professor had held the belief in seven planets, 
and no more, to be a necessary condition of salvation, 
his mental vision would have been so dazed that even if 
he had consented to look through Galileo's telescope, 
his eyes would have reported in accordance with his 
inward alarms rather than with the external fact. So 
long as a belief in propositions is regarded as indispen- 
sable to salvation, the pursuit of truth as such is not 
possible, any more than it is possible for a man who is 
swimming; for his life to make meteorolosrical observa- 
tions on the storm which threatens to overwhelm him. 



126 EVANOELICAL TEACHING I 

The sense of alarm and haste, the anxiety for personal 
safety, which Dr. Gumming insists upon as the proper 
religious attitude, unmans the nature, and allows no 
thorough, calm thinking, no truly noble, disinterested 
feeling. Hence, we by no means suspect that the un- 
scrupulosity of statement with which we charge Dr. 
Gumming extends beyond the sphere of his theological 
prejudices ; religion apart, he probably appreciates and 
practises veracity. 

A grave general accusation must be supported by de- 
tails, and in adducing these, we purposely select the 
most obvious cases of misrepresentation — such as re- 
quire no argument to expose them, but can be perceived 
at a glance. Among Dr. Gumming's numerous books, 
one of the most notable for unscrupulosity of statement 
is the "Manual of Ghristian Evidences," written, as he 
tells us in his Preface, not to give the deepest solutions 
of the difficulties in question, but to furnish Scripture- 
readers, city missionaries, and Sunday-school teachers 
with a "ready reply" to sceptical arguments. This an- 
nouncement that readiness was the chief quality sought 
for in the solutions here given, modifies our inference 
from the other qualities which those solutions present ; 
and it is but fair to presume, that when the Ghristian 
disputant is not in a hurry. Dr. Gumming would recom- 
mend replies less ready and more veracious; Here is an 
example of what in another place "^ he tells his readers 
is "change in their pocket, ... a little ready argument 
which they can employ, and therewith answer a fool ac- 
cording to his folly." From the nature of this argu- 

* " Lect. OD Daniel," p. 6. 



DR. GUMMING. 127 

meutative smail-coin, we are inclined to think Dr. Gum- 
ming understands answering a fool according to his 
folly to mean, giving him a foolish answer. We quote 
from the " Manual of Christian Evidences," p. 62 : 

" Some of the gods which the heathen worshipped were among 
the greatest monsters that ever walked the earth. Mercury was a 
thief,- and because he was an expert thief he was enrolled among 
the gods, Bacchus was a mere sensualist and drunkard; and 
therefore he was enrolled among the gods. Venus was a dissipated 
and abandoned courtesan ; and therefore she was enrolled among 
the goddesses. Mars wiis a savage, that gloried in battle and in 
blood ; and therefore he was deified and enrolled among the gods." 

Does Dr. Gumming believe the purport of these sen- 
tences ? If so, this passage is worth handing down as 
his theory of the Greek myth — as a specimen of the as- 
tounding ignorance which was possible in a metropoli- 
tan preacher a.d. 1854. And if he does not believe 
them. . . . The inference must then be, that he thinks 
delicate veracity about the ancient Greeks is not a Chris- 
tian virtue, but only a "splendid sin" of the unregen- 
erate. This inference is rendered the more probable by 
our finding, a little further on, that he is not more scru- 
pulous about the moderns, if they come under his defi- 
nition of " Infidels." But the passage we are about to 
quote in proof of this has a woi*se quality than its dis- 
crepancy with fact. Who that has a spark of generous 
feeling, that rejoices in the presence of good in a fellow- 
being, has not dwelt with pleasure on the thought that 
Lord Byron's unhappy career was ennobled and purified 
towards its close by a high and sympathetic purpose, by 
honest and energetic efforts for his fellow-men ? Who 
has not read with deep emotion those last pathetic lines, 



128 EVANGELICAL TEACHING I 

beautiful as the after-glow of sunset, in which love and 
resignation are mingled with something of a melancholy 
heroism ? Who has not lingered with compassion over 
the dying scene at Missolonghi — the sufferer's inability 
to make his farewell messages of love intelligible, and 
the last long hours of silent pain ? Yet for the sake of 
furnishing his disciples with a '^ ready reply," Dr. Gum- 
ming can prevail on himself to inoculate them with a 
bad-spirited falsity like the following : 

'' We have one striking exhibition of an infideVs brightest thoughts, 
in some lines written in his dying moments by a man, gifted with great 
genius, capable of prodigious intellectual prowess, but of worthless 
principle, and yet more worthless practices — I mean the celebrated 
Lord Byron. He says — 

" ^ Though gay companions o'er the bowl 
Dispel awhile the sense of ill, 
Though pleasure fills the maddening soul, 
The heart — the heart is lonely still. 

Ay, but to die, and go, alas ! 

Where all have gone and all must go ; 
To be the Nothing that I was. 

Ere born to life and living woe ! 

Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o'er thy days from anguish free, 

And know, whatever thou hast been, 
'Tis something hettei^ not to be. 

Nay, for myself, so dark my fate 

Through every turn of life hath been, 

Man and the world so much I hate, 
I care not when I quit the scene.' " 

It is difficult to suppose that Dr. Gumming can have 
been so grossly imposed upon — that he can be so ill-in- 
formed as really to believe that these lines were " writ- 



DR. GUMMING. i 29 

ten " by Lord Byron in his dying moments ; but, allow- 
ing liiin the full benefit of that possibility, how shall we 
explain his introduction of this feebly rabid doggerel as 
"an intidel's brightest thoughts?" 

In marshalling the evidences of Christianity, Dr. Gum- 
ming directs most of his arguments against opinions that 
are either totally imaginary, or that belong to the past 
rather than to the present ; while he entirely fails to 
meet the difficulties actually felt and urged by those 
who are unable to accept Revelation. There can hard- 
ly be a stronger proof of misconception as to the char- 
acter of free-thinking in the present day than the rec- 
ommendation of Leland's " Short and Easy Method with 
the Deists" — a method which is unquestionably short 
and easy for preachers disinclined to consider their 
stereotyped modes of thinking and arguing, but which 
has quite ceased to realize those epithets in the conver- 
sion of Deists. Yet Dr. Gumming not only recommends 
this' book, but takes the trouble himself to write a fee- 
bler version of its arguments. For example, on the 
question of the genuineness and authenticity of the 
New Testament writings, he says : 

" If, therefore, at a period long subsequent to the death of Christ, 
a number of men had appeared in the world, drawn up a book 
which they christened by the name of Holy Scripture, and recorded 
these things which appear in it as facts when they were only the 
fancies of their own imagination, surely the Jews would have in- 
stantly reclaimed that no such events transpired, that no such per- 
son as Jesus Christ appeared in their capital, and that fheir cruci- 
fixion of him, and their alleged evil treatment of his apostles, were 
mere fictions." — '* Manual of Christian Evidences," p. 81. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that, in such argument 

8 G* 



130 EVANGELICAL TEACHING I 

as this, Dr. Cumming is beating the air. He is meeting 
an hj'pothesis which no one holds, and totally missing the 
real question. The only type of " infidel " whose ex- 
istence Dr. Cumming recognizes is that fossil personage 
who "calls the Bible a lie and a forgery." He seems 
to be ignorant — or he chooses to ignore the fact — that 
there is a large body of eminently instructed and ear- 
nest men who regard the Hebrew and Christian Script- 
ures as a series of historical documents, to be dealt with 
according to the rules of historical criticism ; and that 
an equally large number of men, who are not historical 
critics, find the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of 
the Scriptures opposed to their profoundest moral con- 
victions. Dr. Cumming's infidel is a man who, because 
his lifQ is vicious, tries to convince himself that there is 
no God, and that Christianity is an imposture, but who 
is all the while secretly conscious that he is opposing 
the truth, and cannot help " letting out " admissions 
" that the Bible is the Book of God." We are favored 
with the following " Creed of the Infidel :" 

"I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God, and God 
is matter ; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or 
not. I believe also that the world was not made, but that the 
world made itself, or that it had no beginniug, and that it will last 
forever. I believe that man is a beast ; that the soul is the body, 
and that the body is the soul ; and that after death there is neither 
body nor soul, I believe that there is no religion, that natural re- 
ligion is the only religion, and all religion unnatural. I believe not in 
Moses ; I believe in the first philosophers. I believe not in the 
evangelists; I believe in Chubb, Collins, Toland, Tiudal, and 
Hobbes. I believe in Lord Bolingbroke, and I believe not in St. 
Paul. I believe not in revelation; I believe in tradition; I believe 
in the Talmud; I believe in the Koran; I believe not in the Bible. 



DR. GUMMING. 131 

I believe in Socrates ; I believe in Confucins ; I believe in Mahomet ; 
I believe not in Christ. And lastly, / believe in all unbelief.'' 

The intellectual and moral monster whose creed is 
this complex web of contradictions is, moreover, accord- 
ing to Dr. Camming, a being who unites much simplicity 
and imbecility with his Satanic hardihood, much tender- 
ness of conscience with his obdurate vice. Hear the 
" proof :" 

'' I once met with an acute and enlightened infidel, with whom 
I reasoned day after day, and for hours together; I submitted to 
him the internal, the external, and the experimental evidences, but 
made no impression on his scorn and unbelief. At length I enter- 
tained a suspicion that there was something morally, rather than 
intellectually wrong, and that the bias was not in the intellect, but 
in the heart; one day, therefore, I said to him, 'I must now state 
my conviction, and you may call me uncharitable, but duty compels 
me : you are living in some known and gross sin.' The man's coun- 
tenance became pale ; he bowed and left me." — "Manual of Cliristiau 
Evidences," ^. 254. 

Here we have the remarkable psychological phenome- 
non of an "acute and enlightened" man who, deliber- 
ately purposing to indulge in a favorite sin, and regard- 
ing the Gospel with scorn and unbelief, is nevertheless 
so much more scrupulous than the majority of Chris- 
tians that he cannot " embrace sin and the Gospel si- 
multaneously ;" who is so alarmed at the Gospel in 
which he does not believe, that he cannot be easy witli- 
out trying to crush it ; whose acuteness and enlighten- 
ment suggest to him, as a means of crushing the Gospel, 
to argue from day to day with Dr. Cumming; and who 
is withal so naive that he is taken by surprise when Dr. 
Cumming, failing in argument, resorts to accusation, and 
so render in conscience that, at the mention of his sin, 



132 EVANGELICAL TEACHING I 

lie turns pale and leaves the spot. If there be any hu- 
man mind in existence capable of holding Dr. Cum- 
ming's " Creed of the Infidel," of at the same time 
believing in tradition and "believing in all unbelief," 
it must be the mind of the infidel just described, for 
whose existence we have Dr. Cumming's ex officio word 
as a theologian ; and to theologians we may apply what 
Sancho Panza says of the bachelors of Salamanca, that 
they never tell lies — except when it suits their purpose. 
The total absence from Dr. Cumming's theological 
mind of any demarcation between fact and rhetoric is 
exhibited in another passage, where he adopts the dra- 
matic form : 

" Ask the peasant on the hills — and I have asked amid the moun- 
lains of Braemar and Deeside — ' How do you know that this book is 
divine, and that the religion you profess is true ? You never read 
Paley?' ' No, I never heard of him.' 'You have never read But- 
ler?' ' No, I have never heard of him.' ' Nor Chalmers V ^ No, I 
do not know him.' ' You have never read any books on evidence ? 
'No, I have read no such books.' 'Then, how do you know this 
book is true?' 'Know it! Tell me that the Dee, the Clunie, and 
the Garrawalt, the streams at my feet, do not run ; that the winds 
do not sigh amid the gorges of these blue hills; that the sun does 
not kindle the peaks of Loch-na-Gar — tell me my heart does not 
beat, aud I will believe you ; but do not tell me the Bible is not 
divine. I have found its truth illuminating my footsteps; its 
consolations sustaining my heart. May my tongue cleave to my 
mouth's roof, and my right hand forget its cunning, if I ever deny 
what is my deepest inner experienre, that this blessed book is the 
Book of God.'"—" Church Before the Flood," p. 35. 

Dr. Cumming is so slippery and lax in his mode of pre- 
sentation that we find it impossible to gather whether 
he means to assert that this is what a peasant on the 



DR. GUMMING. 133 

mountains of Braemar did say, or that it is what such a 
peasant would say : in the one case, the passage may be 
taken as a measure of his truthfuhiess; in the other, of 
his judgment. 

His own faith, apparently, has not been altogether in- 
tuitive, like that of his rhetorical peasant, for he tells us 
(" Apoc. Sketches," p. 405) that he has himself experi- 
enced wliat it is to have religious doubts. " I was tainted 
while at the University by this spirit of scepticism. I 
thought Christianity might not be true. The very pos- 
sibility of its being true was the thought I felt I must 
meet and settle. Conscience could give me no peace 
till I had settled it. I read, and I hav^e read from that 
day, for fourteen or fifteen years, till this, and now I am 
as convinced, upon the clearest evidence, that this book 
is the Book of God as that I now address you." This 
experience, however, instead of impressing on him the 
fact that doubt may be the stamp of a truth -lovino* 
mrnd — that sunt quibus non credidisse honor est, etfidei 
futurcB pignus — seems to have produced precisely the 
contrary effect. It has not enabled him even to con- 
ceive the condition of a mind "perplexed in faith but 
pure in deed," craving light, yearning for a faitli that 
will harmonize and cherish its highest powers and aspi- 
rations, but unable to find that faith in dogmatic Chris- 
tianity. His own doubts apparently were of a different 
kind. Nowhere in his pages have we found a humble, 
candid, sympathetic attempt to meet the difficulties that 
may be felt by an ingenuous mind. Everywhere he 
supposes that the doubter is hardened, conceited, con- 
sciously shutting his eyes to the light — a fool who is to 
\m answered according to his folly — that is, with ready 



134: EVANGELICAL TEACHING'. 

replies made up of reckless assertions, of apocryphal 
anecdotes, and, where other resources fail, of vitupera- 
tive imputations. As to the reading which he has prose- 
cuted for fifteen years — either it has left him totally 
ignorant of the relation which his own religious creed 
bears to the criticism and philosophy of the nineteenth 
centur}^, or he systematically blinks that criticism and 
that philosopliy ; and instead of honestly and seriously 
endeavoring to meet and solve what he knows to be the 
real difficulties, contents himself with setting up popin- 
jays to shoot at, for the sake of confirming the ignorance 
and winning the cheap admiration of his evangelical 
hearers and readers. Like the Catholic preacher who, 
after throwing down his cap and apostrophizing it as 
Luther, turned to his audience and said, "You see this 
heretical fellow has not a word to say for himself," Dr. 
dimming, having drawn his ugly portrait of the infidel, 
and put arguments of a convenient quality into his 
mouth, finds a "short and easy method" of confound- 
ing this "croaking frog." 

In his treatment of infidels, we imagine he is guided 
by a mental process which may be expressed in the fol- 
lowing syllogism : Whatever tends to the glory of God 
is true ; it is for the glory of God that infidels should 
be as bad as possible ; therefore, w^hatever tends to show 
that infidels are as bad as possible is true. All infi- 
dels, he tells us, have been men of "gross and licen- 
tious lives." Is there not some well-known unbeliever 
• — David Hume, for example — of whom even Dr. Cnm' 
ming's readers may have heard as an exception ? No 
matter. Some one suspected that he was not an excep- 
tion ; and as that suspicion tends to the glory of God, 



DR. GUMMING. 135 

it is one for a Christian to entertain. (See " Man. of 
Ev.," p. 73.) If we were unable to imagine this kind of 
self-sophistication, we should be obliged to suppose that, 
relying on the ignorance of his evangelical disciples, he 
fed them with direct and conscious falsehoods. "Vol- 
taire," he informs them, " declares there is no God ;" he 
was " an antitheist — that is, one who deliberately and 
avowedlj^ opposed and hated God; who swore in his 
blasphemy that he would dethrone him;" and "advo- 
cated the very depths of the lowest sensuality." With 
regard to many statements of a similar kind, equally at 
variance with truth, in Dr. Cumming's volumes, we pre- 
sume that he has been misled by hearsay or by the 
second-hand character of his acquaintance with free- 
thinking literature. An evangelical preacher is not 
obliged to be well read. Here, however, is a case which 
the extremest supposition of educated ignorance will not 
reach. Even books of " evidences" quote from Yoltaire 
the line — 

" Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait I'iuventer f 

even persons fed on the mere whey and buttermilk of 
literature must know that in philosophy Voltaire was 
nothino^ if not a theist — must know that he wrote not 
against God, but against Jehovah, the God of the Jews, 
whom he believed to be a false God — must know that 
to say Voltaire was an atheist on this ground is as ab- 
surd as to say that a Jacobite opposed hereditary mon- 
archy because he declared the Brunswick family had no 
title to the throne. That Dr. Gumming should repeat 
the vulgar fables about Voltaire's death is merely what 
we might expect from the specimens we have seen of 



136 EVANGELICAL TEACHINGS ' 

his illustrative stories. A man whose accounts of his 
own experience are apocryphal is not likely to put bor- 
rowed narratives to any severe test. 

The alliance between intellectual and moral perver- 
sion is strikingly typified by the way in which he al- 
ternates from the unveracious to the absurd, from mis- 
representation to contradiction. Side by side with the 
adduction of "facts" such as those we have quoted, we 
find him arguing on one page that the doctrine of the 
Trinity was too grand to have been conceived by man, 
and was therefore divine ; and on another page, that the 
Incarnation had been preconceived by man, and is there- 
fore to be accepted as divine. But we are less con- 
cerned with the fallacy of his "ready replies" than with 
their falsity ; and even of this we can only afford space 
for a very few specimens. Here is one : " There is a 
thousand times more proof that the Gospel of John was 
w^ritten by him than there is that the ''AvajSamc' was 
written by Xenophon, or the ' Ars Poetica' by Horace." 
If Dr. Gumming had chosen Plato's Epistles or Ana- 
creon's Poems, instead of the "Anabasis" or the "Ars 
Poetica," he would have reduced the extent of the false- 
hood, and w^ould have furnished a ready reply, which 
would have been equally effective with his Sunday- 
school teachers and their disputants. Hence we con- 
clude this prodigality of misstatement, this exuberance 
of mendacity, is an effervescence of zeal in Tnajorem 
gloriam Dei. Elsewhere he tells us that " the idea of 
the author of the ' Yestiges' is, that man is the develop- 
ment of a monkey, that the monkey is the embrj^o man ; 
so that if you Iceep a haboon long enough^ it will develop 
itself into a man.'''' How well Dr. Gumming has quali- 



DR. GUMMING. 137 

fied himself to judge of the ideas in "that very imphil- 
osophical book," as he pronounces it, may be inferred 
from the fact that he implies the author of the 'Ves- 
tiges' to have originated the nebular hypothesis. 

In the volume from which the last extract is taken, 
even the hardihood of assertion is surpassed by the 
suicidal character of the argument. It is called "The 
Cliurch Before the Flood," and is devoted chiefly to the 
adjustment of the question between the Bible and 
Geology. Keeping within the limits we have prescribed 
to ourselves, we do not enter into the matter of this dis- 
cussion ; we merely pause a little over the volume in 
order to point out Dr. Cumming's mode of treating the 
question. He first tells us that " the Bible has not a 
single scientific error in it;" that ^''its slightest intima- 
tions of scientific jprincijples or natural jphenomena have 
in every instance heen demonstrated to he exactly and 
strictly true f'' and he asks : 

" How is it that Moses, with no greater education than the Hindoo 
or the ancient philosopher, has written his book, touching science 
at a thousand points, so accurately that scientific research has dis- 
covered no flaws in it ; and yet in those investigations which have 
taken place in more recent centuries it has not heen shown that 
he has committed one single error, or made one solitary assertion, 
which can be proved by the maturest science, or by the most 
eagle-eyed philosopher, to be incorrect, scientifically or histori- 
cally ?" 

According to this, the relation of the Bible to science 

should be one of the strong points of apologists for 

revelation : the scientific accuracy of Moses should 

stand at the head of their evidences ; and they might 

urge with some cogency tliat since Aristotle, who de- 
8* 



138 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 

voted himself to science, and lived many ages after 
Moses, does little else than err ingeniously, this fact, that 
the Jewish lawgiver, though touching science at a thou- 
sand points, has written nothing that has not been " de- 
monstrated to be exactly and strictly true," is an irrefrag- 
able proof of his having derived his knowledge from a 
supernatural source. How does it happen, then, that Dr. 
Gumming forsakes this strong position ? How is it that 
we find him, some pages further on, engaged in reconcil- 
ing Genesis with the discoveries of science, by means of 
imaginative hypotheses and feats of " interpretation " ? 
Surely that which has been demonstrated to be exactly 
and strictly true does not require hypothesis and critical 
argument, in order to show that it may possibly agree 
with those very discoveries by means of which its exact 
and strict truth has been demonstrated. And why 
should Dr. Gumming suppose, as we shall presently find 
him supposing, that men of science hesitate to accept the 
Bible because it appears to contradict their discoveries ? 
By his own statement, that appearance of contradiction 
does not exist ; on the contrary, it has been demonstrated 
that the Bible precisely agrees with their discoveries. 
Perhaps, however, in saying of the Bible that its "slight- 
est intimations of scientific principles or natural phe- 
nomena have in every instance been demonstrated to be 
exactl}^ and strictly true," Dr. Gumming merely means 
to imply that theologians have found out a way of ex- 
plaining the Biblical text so that it no longer, in their 
opinion, appears to be in contradiction with the dis- 
coveries of science. One of two things, therefore : either, 
he uses language without the slightest appreciation of 
its real meaning ; or, the assertions he makes on one page 



DE. GUMMING. 139 

are directly contradicted by the arguments he urges on 
another. 

Dr. Cumming's principles — or, we should rather say, 
confused notions — of Biblical interpretation, as exhibited 
in this volume, are particularly significant of his mental 
calibre. He says (" Church Before the Flood," p. 93) : 

"Men of science, who are full of scientific investigation, and en- 
amoured of scientific discovery, will hesitate before they accept a 
book which, they think, contradicts the plainest and the most un- 
equivocal disclosures they have made in the bowels of the earth, or 
among the stars of the sky. To all these we answer, as we have 
already indicated, there is not the least dissonance between God's 
written book and the most mature discoveries of geological science. 
One thing, however, there may be : thei'e may be a contradiction be- 
tween the discoveries of geology and our preconceived interpretations of the 
Bible. But this is not because the Bible is wrong, but because our 
interpretation is wrong." (The italics in all cases are our own.) 

Elsewhere he says : 

" It seems to me plainly evident that the record of Genesis, when 
read fairly, and not in the light of our prejudices — and, mind you, the 
essence of Popery is to read the Bible in the light of our opinions, instead 
of vieiving our opinions in the light of the Bible, in its plain and obvious 
sense — falls in perfectly with the assertion of geologists." 

On comparing these two passages, we gather that when 
Dr. Gumming, under stress of geological discovery, as- 
signs to the Biblical text a meaning entirely different 
from that which, on his own showing, was universally 
ascribed to it for more than three thousand years, he 
regards himself as " viewing his opinions in the light 
of the Bible in its plain and obvious sense !" Now he 
is reduced to one of two alternatives : either he must 
hold that the "plain and obvious meaning" lies in the 



140 EVANGELICAL TEACHING! 

sum of knowledge possessed by each successive age — ' 
the Bible being an elastic garment for the growing 
thought of mankind ; or he must hold that some por- 
tions are amenable to this criterion, and others not so. 
In the former case, he accepts the principle of inter- 
pretation adopted by the early German rationalists ; in 
the latter case, he has to show a further criterion by 
which we can judge what parts of the Bible are elastic 
and what rigid. If he says that the interpretation of 
the text is rigid wherever it treats of doctrines necessary 
to salvation, we answer, that for doctrines to be necessary 
to salvation they must first be true ; and in order to be 
true, according to his own principle, they must be 
founded on a correct interpretation of the Biblical text. 
Thus he makes the necessity of doctrines to salvation the 
criterion of infallible interpretation, and infallible inter- 
pretation the criterion of doctrines being necessary to 
salvation. He is whirled round in a circle, having, by 
admitting the principle of novelty in interpretation, 
completely deprived himself of a basis. That he should 
seize the very moment in which lie is most palpably be- 
traying that he has no test of Biblical truth beyond his 
own opinion, as an appropriate occasion for flinging the 
rather novel reproach against Popery that its essence is 
to " read the Bible in the light of our opinions," would 
be an almost pathetic self-exposure, if it were not dis- 
gusting. Imbecility that is not even meek, ceases to be 
pitiable and becomes simply odious. 

Parentlietic lashes of this kind against Popery are very 
frequent with Dr. Cumming, and occur even in his more 
devout passages, where their introduction must surely 
disturb the spiritual exercises of his hearers. Indeed, 



DR. GUMMING. 141 

Roman Catholics fare worse with him even than infidels. 
Infidels are the small vermin — the mice to be bagged en 
passant. The main object of his chase — the rats which 
are to be nailed up as trophies — are the Roman Catholics. 
Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan. But reassure 
yourselves ! Dr. dimming lias been created. Antichrist 
is enthroned in the Vatican ; but he is stoutly withstood 
by the Boanerges of Crown Court. The personality of 
Satan, as might be expected, is a very prominent tenet 
in Dr. Cumming's discourses; those who doubt it are, 
he thinks, "generally specimens of the victims of Satan 
as a triumphant seducer ;" and it is through the medium 
of this doctrine that he habitually contemplates Roman 
Catholics. They are the puppets of which the devil 
holds the strings. It is only exceptionally that he speaks 
of them as fellow-men, acted on by the same desires, fears, 
and hopes as himself, his rule is to hold them up to his 
hearers as foredoomed instruments of Satan, and vessels 
of wrath. If he is obliged to admit that they are "no 
shams," that they are " thoroughly in earnest " — that is 
because they are inspired by hell, because they are under 
an " infra - natural " influence. If their missionaries 
are found wherever Protestant missionaries go, this zeal 
in propagating their faitli is not in them a consistent 
virtue, as it is in Protestants, but a "melancholy fact," 
affording additional evidence that they are instigated 
and assisted by the devil. And Dr. Cumming is in- 
clined to think that they work miracles, because that is 
no more than might be expected fromthe known ability 
of Satan, who inspires them.* He admits, indeed, that 

* '' Signs of the Times," p. 38. 



14:2 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 

" there is a fragment of the Church of Christ in the 
very bosom of that awful apostasy,""^ and that there are 
members of the Church of Rome in glory ; but this ad- 
mission is rare and episodical — is a declaration, jpro 
forma, about as influential on the general disposition 
and habits as an aristocrat's profession of democracy. 

This leads us to mention another conspicuous charac- 
teristic of Dr. Cumming's teaching — the absence of gen- 
uine charity. It is true that he makes large profes- 
sion of tolerance and liberality within a certain circle ; 
he exhorts Christians to unity ; he would have Church- 
men fraternize with Dissenters, and exhorts these two 
branches of God's family to defer the settlement of 
their differences till the millennium. But the lo^x thus 
taught is the love of the clan, which is the correlative of 
antagonism to the rest of mankind. It is not sympathy 
and helpfulness towards men as men, but towards men 
as Christians, and as Christians in the sense of a small 
minority. Dr. Cumming's religion may demand a trib- 
ute of love, but it gives a charter to hatred ; it may en- 
join charity, but it fosters all uncharitableness. If I be- 
lieve that God tells me to love my enemies, but at the 
same time hates his own enemies and requires me to 
have one will with him, which has the larger scope, 
love or hatred ? And we refer to those pages of Dr. 
Cumming's in which he opposes Roman Catholics, Pu- 
seyites, and infidels — pages which form the larger pro- 
portion of what he has published — for proof that the 
idea of God which both the logic and spirit of his dis- 
courses keep present to his hearers is that of a God who 



^ u 



Apoc. Sketches," p. 243. 



DB. GUMMING. 143 

hates his enemies, a God who teaches love by fierce de- 
nunciations of wrath, a God who encourages obedience 
to his precepts by elaborately revealing to us that his 
own government is in precise opposition to those pre- 
cepts. We know the usual evasions on this subject. 
We know Dr. Gumming would say that even Roman 
Catholics are to be loved and succored as men ; that 
he would help even that " unclean spirit," Cardinal 
Wiseman, out of a ditch. But who that is in the slight- 
est degree acquainted with the action of the human 
mind, will believe that any genuine and large charity 
can grow out of an exercise of love which is always to 
have an arriere-pensee of hatred ? Of what quality 
would be the conjugal love of a husband who loved his 
spouse as a wife, but hated her as a woman ? It is re- 
served for the regenerate mind, according to Dr. Cum- 
ming's conception of it, to be "wise, amazed, temperate 
and furious, loyal and neutral, in a moment." Precepts 
of charity uttered with faint breath at the end of a ser- 
mon are perfectly futile, when all the force of the lungs 
has been spent in keeping the hearer's mind fixed on 
the conception of his fellow-men, not as fellow-sinners 
and fellow-sufferers, but as agents of hell, as automata 
through w^hom Satan plays his game on earth ; not on 
objects which call forth their reverence, their love, their 
hope of good even in the most strayed and perverted, 
but on a minute identification of human things with 
such symbols as the scarlet whore, the beast out of the 
abj^ss, scorpions whose sting is in their tails, men who 
have the mark of the beast, and unclean spirits like 
frogs. You might as well attenjpt to educate a child's 
sense of beauty by hanging its nursery with the horri- 



14^ EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 

ble and grotesque pictures in which the early paint- 
ers represented the last judgment, as expect Christian 
graces to flourish on that prophetic interpretation which 
Dr. Cumming offers as the principal nutriment of his 
flock. Quite apart from the critical basis of that inter- 
pretation, quite apart from the degree of truth tliere 
may be in Dr. Cumming's prognostications — questions 
into which we do not choose to enter — his use of proph- 
ecy must be a jpriori condemned in the judgment of 
riglit-minded persons, by its results as testified in the 
net moral effect of his sermons. The best minds that 
accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system believe 
that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the sav- 
ing but the educating of men's souls, the creating with- 
in them of holy dispositions, the subduing of egoistical 
pretensions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire 
tliat the will of God — a will synonymous with goodness 
and truth — may be done on earth. But what relation 
to all this has a system of interpretation which keeps 
the mind of the Christian in the position of a spectator 
at a gladiatorial show, of which Satan is the wild beast 
in the shape of the great red dragon, and two thirds of 
mankind the victims — the whole provided and got up 
by God for the edification of tlie saints ! The demon- 
stration that the Second Advent is at hand, if true, can 
have no really holy, spiritual effect; the highest state of 
mind inculcated by the Gospel is resignation to the dis- 
posal of God's providence — " Whether we live, we live 
unto the Lord ; whether we die, we die unto the Lord" 
— not an eagerness to see a temporal manifestation which 
shall confound the enemies of God and give exaltation 
to the saints ; it is to dwell in Christ by spiritual com- 



DK. GUMMING. 145 

munion with his nature, not to fix the date when he 
shall appear in the skj. Dr. Cu mining's delight in 
shadowing forth the downfall of the Man of Sin, in 
prognosticating the battle of Gog and Magog, and in ad- 
vertising the pre-niillennial Advent, is simply the trans- 
portation of political passions on to a so-called relig- 
ious platform ; it is the anticipation of the triumph of 
^' our party," accomplished by our principal men be 
ing "sent for" into the clouds. Let us be understood 
to speak in all seriousness. If we were in search of 
amusement, we should not seek for it by examining Dr. 
Cumming's works in order to ridicule them. We are 
even simply discharging a disagreeable duty in delivering 
our opinion that, judged by the highest standard of or- 
thodox Christianity, they are little calculated to produce 

"A closer walk with God, 
A calm aud heavenly frame ;" 

but are more likely to nourish egoistic complacency and 
pretension, a hard and condemnatorj^ spirit towards one's 
fellow-men, and a busy occupation with the minutiae of 
events, instead of a reverent contemplation of great 
facts and a wise application of great principles. It 
would be idle to consider Dr. Cumming's theory of 
prophecy in any other light ; as a philosophy of history, 
or a specimen of Biblical interpretation, it bears about 
the same relation to the extension of genuine knowl- 
edge as the astrological " house " in the heavens bears 
to the true structure and relations of the universe. 

The slight degree in which Dr. Cumming's faith is 
imbued with truly human sympathies is exhibited in 
tne way he treats the doctrine of eternal punishment. 

7 



146 EVANGELICAL TEACHING : 

Here a little of that readiness to strain the letter of the 
Scriptures which he so often manifests when his object 
is to prove a point against Romanism, would have been 
an amiable frailty if it had been applied on the side of 
mercy. When he is bent on proving that the prophecy 
concerning the Man of Sin, in the Second Epistle to the 
Thessalonians, refers to the Pope, he can extort from 
the innocent word KaOtaai the meaning cathedrize ^ 
though why we are to translate " He as God cathe- 
drizes in the temple of God," any more than we are to 
translate " cathedrize here, while I go and pray yonder," 
it is for Dr. Gumming to show more clearly than he 
has yet done. But when rigorous literality will favor 
the conclusion that the greater proportion of the human 
race will be eternally miserable, then he is rigorously 
literal. He says : 

" The Greek words, hq tovq aldvag tojv aldjvojv, bere translated 
'everlastiug/ signify literally 'unto tbe ages of ages;' aid &v, 'al- 
ways being/ tbat is, everlasting, ceaseless existence. Plato uses 
tbe word in tbis sense wben be says, ' Tbe gods tbat live forever.' 
But I must also admit tbat tbis word is used several times in a lim- 
ited extent — as for instance, ' Tbe everlasting bills.' Of course, 
tbis does not mean tbat tbere never will be a time wben tbe bills 
will cease to stand ; tbe expression bere is evidently figurative, 
but it implies eternity. Tbe bills sball remain as long as tbe 
eartb lasts, and no hand has power to remove them but tbat Eter- 
nal One which first called them into being ; so the state of the soul 
remains tbe same after death as long as tbe soul exists, and no one 
has power to alter it. Tbe sante word is often applied to denote 
tbe existence of God — ' tbe Eternal God.' Can we limit tbe word 
wben applied to bira ? Because occasionally used in a limited 
sense, we must not infer it is always so. 'Everlasting' plainly 
means in Scripture ' without end ;' it is only to be explained figura- 
tively when it is evident it cannot be interpreted in any other way " 



DR. GUMMING. 147 

We do not discuss whether Dr. Cnmming's interpre- 
tation accords with the meaning of the Kew Testament 
writers : we simply point to the fact that the text be- 
comes elastic for him when he wants freer play for his 
prejudices ; while he makes it an adamantine barrier 
against the admission that mercy will ultimately tri- 
nmph, that God — i. e.^ Love — will be all in all. He as- 
sures us that he does not " delight to dwell on the mis- 
ery of the lost ;" and we believe him. That misery 
does not seem to be a question of feeling with him, 
either one way or the other. He does not merely re- 
sign himself to the awful mystery of eternal punish- 
ment; he contends for it. Do we object, he asks,"^ to 
everlasting happiness ? then why object to everlasting 
misery ? — reasoning which is perhaps felt to be cogent 
by theologians who anticipate the everlasting happiness 
for themselves, and the everlasting misery for their 
neighbors. 

The compassion of some Christians has been glad to 
take refuge in the opinion that the Bible allows the sup- 
position of annihilation for the impenitent ; but the 
rigid sequence of Dr. Cumming's reasoning will not ad- 
mit of this idea. He sees that flax is made into linen,, 
and linen into paper ; that paper, when burned, partly 
ascends as smoke, and then again descends in rain, or in 
dust and carbon. " Kot one particle of the original 
flax is lost, although there may be not one particle that 
has not undergone an entire change ; annihilation is not, 
but change of form is. It will he thus with our hodies 
at the resurrection. The death of the body means not 

* " Manual of Christiau Evidence," p. 184. 



148 EVANGELICAL TEACHING I 

annihilation. Not onefeaUire of the face will be anni- 
hilated." Having established the perpetuity of the 
body by this close and clear analogy — namely, that as 
there is a total change in the particles of flax in conse- 
quence of which they no longer appear as flax, so there 
will not be a total change in the particles of the human 
body, but they will reappear as the human body — he 
does not seem to consider that the perpetuity of the 
body involves the perpetuity of the soul, but requires 
separate evidence for this, and finds such evidence by 
begging the very question at issue : namely, by assert- 
ing that the text of the Scriptures implies " the perpe- 
tuity of the punishment of the lost, and the conscious- 
ness of the punishment which they endure." Yet it is 
drivelling like this which is listened to and lauded as 
eloquence by hundreds, and which a doctor of divinity 
can believe that he has his " reward as a saint " for 
preaching and publishing ! 

One more characteristic of Dr. Cumming's writings, 
and we have done. This is the perverted moral judg- 
ment that everywhere reigns in them. Not that this 
perversion is peculiar to Dr. Gumming ; it belongs to 
the dogmatic system which he shares with all evangeli- 
cal believers. But the abstract tendencies of svstems 
are represented in very different degrees, according to 
the different characters of those who embrace them ; 
just as the same food tells differently on different con- 
stitutions: and there are certain qualities in Dr. Gum- 
ming that cause the perversion of which we speak to ex- 
hibit itself with peculiar prominence in his teaching. 
A single extract will enable us to explain what we 
mean : 



DR. GUMMING. 149 

" The * thoughts' are evil. If it were possible for human eye to 
discern and to detect the thoughts that flutter round the heart of 
an unregenerate man — to mark their hue and their multitude — it 
would be found that they are indeed ' evil.' We speak not of the 
thief, and the murderer, and the adulterer, and suchlike, whose 
crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tribunals, and whose 
unenviable character it is to take the lead in the paths of sin ; but 
we refer to the men who are marked out by their practice of many 
of the seemliest moralities of life — by the exercise of the kindliest 
affections, and the interchange of the sweetest reciprocities — and 
of these men, if unrenewed and unchanged, we pronounce that 
their thoughts are evil. To ascertain this, we must refer to the 
object around which our thoughts ought continually to circulate. 
The Scriptures assert that this object is the glory of God; that for 
this we ought to think, to act, and to speak ; and that in thus 
thinking, acting, and speaking, there is involved the purest and 
most endearing bliss. Now it will be found true of the most amia- 
ble men, that with all their good society and kindliness of heart, 
and all their strict and unbending integrity, they never, or rarely, 
think of the glory of God. The question never occurs to them — 
Will this redound to the glory of God? Will this make his name 
more known, his being more loved, his praise more sung? And 
just inasmuch as their every thought comes short of this lofty aim, 
in so much does it come short of good, and entitle itself to the 
character of evil. If the glory of God is not the absorbing and the 
influential aim of their thoughts, then they are evil ; but God's 
glory never enters into their minds. They are amiable, because it 
chances to be one of the constitutional tendencies of their individ- 
ual character, left uneffaced by the Fall ; and they are just and up- 
right, because they have perhaps no occasion to he otherwise, or find it 
subservient to their interests to maintain such a character." — "Occ. 
Disc," vol. i. p. 8. 

Again we read (ibid., p. 236) : 

"There are traits in the Christian character which the mere 
worldly man cannot understand. He can understand the outward 
morality, but he cannot understand the inner spring of it ; he can 



150 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 

understand Dorcas's liberality to the poor, but he cannot penetrate 
the ground of Dorcas's liberality. Some men give to the poor because 
they are ostentatious^ or because they think the poor will ultimately 
avenge their neglect ; hut the Christian gives to the poor, not only because 
he has sensibilities like other men, but because inasmuch as ye did it to 
the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me." 

Before entering on the more general question in- 
volved in these quotations, we must point to the clauses 
we have marked with italics, where Dr. Gumming ap- 
pears to express sentiments which, we are happy to 
think, are not shared by the majority of his brethren in 
the faith. Dr. Gumming, it seems, is unable to con- 
ceive that the natural man can have any other motive 
for being just and upright than that it is useless to be 
otherwise, or that a character for honesty is profitable ; 
according to his experience, between the feelings of os- 
tentation and selfish alarm and the feeling of love to 
Ghrist, there lie no sensibilities which can lead a man 
to relieve want. Granting, as we should prefer to 
think, that it is Dr. Gumming's exposition of his senti- 
ments which is deficient rather than his sentiments 
themselves, still, the fact that the deficiency lies pre- 
cisely here, and that he can overlook it not only in the 
haste of oral delivery but in the examination of proof- 
sheets, is strongly significant of his mental bias — of the 
faint degree in which he sympathizes with the disinter- 
ested elements of human feeling, and of the fact, which 
we are about to dwell upon, that those feelings are to- 
tally absent from his religious theory. Now, Dr. Gum- 
ming invariably assumes that, in fulminating against 
those who differ from him, he is standing on a moral 
elevation to which they are compelled reluctantly to 



DR. GUMMING. 151 

look up ; that his theory of motives and conduct is in 
its loftiness and purity a perpetual rebuke to their low 
and vicious desires and practice. It is time he should be 
told that the reverse is the fact ; that there are men who 
do not merely cast a superficial glance at his doctrine, 
and fail to see its beauty or justice, but who, after a 
close consideration of that doctrine, pronounce it to be 
subversive of true moral development, and therefore 
positively noxious. Dr. Gumming is fond of showing 
up the teaching of Romanism, and accusing it of under- 
mining true morality : it is time he should be told that 
there is a large body, both of thinkers and practical 
men, who hold precisely the same opinion of his own 
teaching — with this difference, that they do not regard 
it as the inspiration of Satan, but as the natural crop of 
a human mind where the soil is chiefly made up of ego- 
istic passions and dogmatic beliefs. 

Dr. Cumming's theory, as we have seen, is that ac- 
tions are good or evil according as they are prompted 
or not prompted by an exclusive reference to the 
"glory of God." God, then, in Dr. Cumming's con- 
ception, is a being who has no pleasure in the exercise 
of love and truthfulness and justice, considered as af- 
fecting the well-being of his creatures ; he has satisfac- 
tion in us only in so far as we exhaust our motives and 
dispositions of all relation to our fellow-beings, and re- 
place sympathy with men by anxiety for the "glory of 
God." The deed of Grace Darling, when she took a 
boat in the storm to rescue drowning men and women, 
was not good if it was only compassion that nerved her 
arm and impelled her to brave death for the chance of 
saving others ; it was only good if she asked herself^* 



152 EVANGELICAL TEACHING I 

Will this redound to the glory of God ? The man who 
endures tortures rather than betray a trust, the man who 
spends years in toil in order to discharge an obligation 
from which the law declares him free, must be animated 
not by the spirit of fidelity to his fellow-man, but by a 
desire to make " the name of God more known." The 
sweet charities of domestic life — the ready hand and 
the soothing word in sickness, the forbearance towards 
frailties, the prompt helpfulness in all efforts and sym- 
pathy in all joys — are simply evil if they result from a 
'' constitutional tendency," or from dispositions disci- 
plined by the experience of suffering and the percep- 
tion of moral loveliness. A wife is not to devote her- 
self to her husband out of love to him and a sense of 
the duties implied by a close relation — she is to be a 
faithful wife for the glory of God ; if she feels her 
natural affections welling up too strongly, she is to re- 
press them ; it will not do to act from natural affec- 
tion — she must think of the glory of God. A man is 
to guide his affairs with energy and discretion, not from 
an honest desire to fulfil his responsibilities as a mem- 
ber of society and a father, but — that " God's praise 
may be sung." Dr. Cumming's Christian pays his 
debts for the glory of God : were it not for the coer- 
cion of that supreme motive, it would be evil to pay 
them. A man is not to be just from a feeling of jus- 
tice ; he is not to help his fellow-men out of good-will 
to his fellow-men ; he is not to be a tender husband and 
father out of affection : all these natural muscles and 
fibres are to be torn away and replaced by a patent 
steel-spring — anxiety for the ^' glory of God." 

Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids 



DR. GUMMING. 153 

tiie complete prevalence of such a theory. Fatally pow- 
erful as religious systems have been, human nature is 
stronger and wider than religious systems, and tliough 
dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its 
growth: build walls round a living tree as you will, the 
bricks and mortar have by-and-by to give way before 
the slow and sure operation of the sap. But next to 
that hatred of the enemies of God which is the princi- 
pie of persecution, there perhaps has been no perver- 
sion more obstructive of true moral development than 
this substitution of a reference to the glory of God for 
the direct promptings of the sympathetic feelings. Be- 
nevolence and justice are strong only in proportion as 
they are directly and inevitably called into activity by 
their proper objects: pity is strong only because we 
are strongly impressed by suffering; and only in pro- 
portion as it is compassion that speaks through the 
eyes when we soothe, and moves the arm when we suc- 
cor, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the soothing or 
the succor be given because another being wishes or 
approves it, the deed ceases to be one of benevolence, 
and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of self-in- 
terest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in pro- 
ducing an action^ but they presuppose the weakness of 
the direct motive; and conversely, when the direct mo- 
tive is strong, the action of accessory motives will be 
excluded. If then, as Dr. Gumming inculcates, the 
glory of God is to be "the absorbing and the influen- 
tial aim" in our thoughts and actions, this must tend to 
neutralize the human sympathies ; the stream of feeling 
will be diverted from its natural current in order to feed 
an artificial canal. The idea of God is really moral in 
9 7* 



154 EVANGELICAL TEACHING! 

its influence, it really cherishes all that is best and love- 
liest in man, only when God is contemplated as sympa- 
thizing with the pure elements of human feeling, as pos- 
sessing infinitely all those attributes which we recognize 
to be moral in humanity. In this light, the idea of God 
and the sense of his presence intensify all noble feeling, 
and encourage all noble effort, on the same principle 
that human sympathy is found a source of strength : the 
brave man feels braver when he knows that another stout 
heart is beating time with his ; the devoted woman who 
is wearing out her years in patient effort to alleviate 
suffering or save vice from the last stages of degrada- 
tion finds aid in the pressure of a friendly hand which 
tells her that there is one who understands her deeds, 
and in her place would do the like. The idea of a God 
who not only sympathizes with all we feel and endure 
for our fellow-men, but who will pour new life into our 
too languid love, and give firmness to our vacillating 
purpose, is an extension and multiplication of the ef- 
fects produced by human sympathy ; and it has been 
intensified for the better spirits who have been under 
the influence of orthodox Christianity, by the contem- 
plation of Jesus as " God manifest in the flesh." But 
Dr. Cumming's God is the very opposite of all this: 
he is a God who, instead of sharing and aiding our 
human sympathies, is directly in collision with them; 
who, instead of strengthening the bond between man 
and man, by encouraging the sense that they are both 
alike the objects of his love and care, thrusts himself 
between them and forbids them to feel for each other ! 
except as they have relation to him. He is a God who, 
instead of adding his solar force to swell the tide of 



DR. CUMMING. 155 

those impulses that tend to give humanity a common 
life in which the good of one is the good of all, com- 
mands us to check those impulses, lest they should pre- 
vent us from thinking of his glory. It is in vain for 
Dr. Gumming to say that we are to love man for God's 
sake : with the conception of God which his teaching 
presents, the love of God for man's sake involves, as 
his writings abundantly show, a strong principle of 
hatred. We can only love one being for the sake of 
another when there is an habitual delight in associating 
the idea of those two beings — that is, when the object 
of our indirect love is a source of joy and honor to the 
object of our direct love. But, according to Dr. Cum- 
niing's theory, the majority of mankind — the majority 
of his neighbors — are in precisely the opposite relation 
to God. His soul has no pleasure in them : they be- 
long more to Satan than to him ; and if they contrib- 
ute to his glory, it is against their will. Dr. Cum- 
niing, then, can only love some men for God's sake; 
the rest he must in consistency hateiov God's sake. 

There must be many, even in the circle of Dr. Cum- 
ming's admirers, who would be revolted by the doctrine 
we have just exposed, if their natural good sense and 
healthy feeling were not early stifled by dogmatic be- 
liefs, and their reverence misled by pious phrases. But 
as it is, many a rational question, many a generous in- 
stinct, is repelled as the suggestion of a supernatural 
enemy, or as the ebullition of human pride and corrup- 
tion. This state of inward contradiction can be put an 
end to only by the conviction that the free and dili- 
gent exertion of the intellect, instead of being a sin, is a 
part of their responsibility — that Right and Reason are 



15G EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 

synonymous. The fundamental faith for man is faith 
in the result of a brave, honest, and steady use of all 
his faculties : 

" Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul according well 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster." 

Before taking leave of Dr. Gumming, let us express a 
hope that we have in no case exaggerated the unfavor- 
able character of the inferences to be drawn from his 
pages. His creed often obliges him to hope the worst 
of men, and to exert himself in proving that the worst 
is true ; but thus far we are happier than he. We have 
no theory which requires us to attribute unworthy mo- 
tives to Dr. Gumming, no opinions, religious or irrelig- 
ious, which can make it a gratification to us to detect 
him in delinquencies. On the contrary, the better we 
are able to think of him as a man, while we are obliged 
to disapprove him as a theologian, the stronger will be the 
evidence for our conviction that the tendency towards 
good in human nature has a force which no creed can 
utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate tri- 
umph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions. 



THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: 
LECKY'S HISTORY. 

There is a valuable class of books on great subjects 
which have something of the character and functions of 
good popular lecturing. Thej are not original, not sub- 
tile, not of close logical texture, not exquisite either in 
tliought or style; but by virtue of these negatives they 
are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence. 
They have enough of organizing purpose in them to 
make their facts illustrative, and to leave a distinct re- 
sult in the mind, even when most of the facts are for- 
gotten ; and they have enough of vagueness and vacilla- 
tion in their theory to win them ready acceptance from 
a mixed audience. The vagueness and vacillation are 
not devices of timidity ; they are the honest result of the 
writer's own mental character, which adapts him to be 
the instructor and the favorite of " the general reader." 
For the most part, the general reader of the present day 
does not exactly know what distance he goes; he only 
knows that he does not go "too far." Of any remark- 
able thinker whose writings have excited controversy, 
he likes to have it said that " his errors are to be de- 
plored," leaving it not too certain what those errors are ; 
he is fond of what may be called disembodied opinions, 
that float in vapory phrases above all systems of thought 
or action ; he likes an undefined Christianity which op- 



158 THE INFLrENCE OF RATIONALISM: 

poses Itself to nothing in particular, an undefined edu- 
cation of the people, an undefined amelioration of all 
things: in fact, he likes sound views — nothing extreme, 
but something between the excesses of the past and the 
excesses of the present. This modern type of the 
general reader may be known in conversation by the 
cordiality with which he assents to indistinct, blurred 
statements: say that black is black, he will shake his 
head and hardly think it ; say that black is not so very 
black, he will reply, " Exactly." He has no hesitation, 
if you wish it, even to get up at a public meeting and 
express his conviction that at times, and within certain 
limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be equal ; 
but, on the other hand, he would urge that the spirit of 
geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry 
is a bigotry against any clearly defined opinion ; not in 
the least based on a scientific scepticism, but belonging to 
a lack of coherent thought — a spongy texture of mind, 
that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one thing he is 
stanch for is the utmost liberty of private haziness. 

But precisely these characteristics of the general 
reader, rendering him incapable of assimilating ideas 
unless they are administered in a highly diluted form, 
make it a matter of rejoicing that there are clever, fair- 
minded men, who will write books for him — men very 
much above him in knowledge and ability, but not too 
remote from him in their habits of thinking, and who 
can thus prepare for him infusions of history and science 
that will leave some solidifying deposit, and save him 
from a fatal softening of the intellectual skeleton. 
Among such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky's "History 
of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism 



lecky's history. 159 

in Europe '' entitles him to a high place. He has pre- 
pared himself for its production bj an unusual amount 
of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and 
quotations with much judgment; and he gives proof of 
those important moral qualifications — impartiality, seri- 
ousness, and modesty. This praise is chiefly applicable 
to the long chapter on the history of magic and witch- 
craft, which opens the work, and to the two chapters on 
the antecedents and history of persecution, which occur, 
the one at the end of the first volume, the other at the 
beginning of the second. In these chapters Mr. Lecky 
has a narrower and better-traced path before him than 
in other portions of his work ; he is more occupied with 
presenting a particular class of facts in their historical 
sequence, and in their relation to certain grand tide- 
marks of opinion, than with disquisition ; and his writ- 
ing is freer than elsewhere from an apparent confused- 
ness of thought and an exuberance of approximative 
phrases, which can be serviceable in no other way than 
as diluents needful for the sort of reader we have just 
described. 

The history of magic and witchcraft has been judi- 
ciously chosen by Mr. Lecky as the subject of his first 
section on the Declining Sense of the Miraculous, be- 
cause it is strikingly illustrative of a position with the 
truth of which he is strongly impressed, though he may 
not always treat of it with desirable clearness and pre- 
cision : namely, that certain beliefs become obsolete, not 
in consequence of direct arguments against them, but 
because of their incongruity with prevalent habits of 
thought. Here is his statement of the two '^ classes 
of influences " by which the n>ass of men, in what is 



160 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM J 

called civilized society, get their beliefs gradually mod- 
ified: 

"If we ask why it is that the world has rejected what was ouce 
so universally and so intensely believed, why a narrative of an old 
woman \Yho had been seen riding on a broomstick, or who was 
proved to have transformed herself into a wolf, and to have de- 
voured the flocks of her neighbors, is deemed so entirely incredible, 
most persons would probably be unable to give a very definite an- 
swer to the question. It is not because we have exanuned the evi- 
dence and found it insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, 
when it does not prevent, examination. It is rather because the 
idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narratives, that it 
is difficult even to consider them with gravity. Yet at one time 
no such improbability was felt, and hundreds of persons have been 
burued simply on the two grounds I have mentioned. 

"When so complete a change takes place in public opinion, it 
may be ascribed to one or other of two causes. It may be the re- 
sult of a controversy which has conclusively settled the question, 
establishing to the satisfaction of all parties a clear preponderance 
of argument or fact in favor of one opinion, and making that opin- 
ion a truism which is accepted by all enlightened men, even though 
they have not themselves examined the evidence on which it rests. 
Thus, if any one in a company of ordinarily educated persons were 
to deny the motion of the earth, or the circulation of the blood, hi« 
statement would be received with derision, though it is probable 
that some of his audience would be unable to demonstrate the first 
truth, and that very few of them could give sufficient reasons for 
the second. They may not themselves be able to defend their 
position ; but they are aware that, at certain known periods of his- 
tory, controversies on those subjects took place, and that known 
writers then brought forward some definite arguments or experi- 
ments, which were ultimately accepted by the whole learned world 
as rigid and conclusive demonstrations. It is possible, also, for as 
complete a change to be effected by what is called the spirit of the 
age. The general intellectual tendencies pervading the literature 
of a century profoundly modify the character of the public mind, 



lecky's history. 161 

They form a new tone and habit of thought. They alter the meas- 
ure of probability. They create new attractions and new antipa- 
thies, and they eventually cause as absolute a rejection of certain 
old opinions as could be produced by the most cogent and definite 
arguments." 

Mr. Leckj proceeds to some questionable views con- 
cerning the evidences of witclicraft, which seem to be 
irreconcilable even with his own remarks later on ; bnt 
thej lead him to the statement, thoroughly made out 
by his historical survey, that "the movement was 
mainly silent, unargumentative, and insensible; that 
men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft, because 
they came gradually to look upon it as absurd; and 
that this new tone of thought appeared, first of all, in 
tliose who were least subject to theological influences, 
and soon spread through the educated laity, and, last of 
all, took possession of the clergy." 

We have rather painful proof that this "second class 
of influences " with a vast number go hardly deeper than 
fashion, and that witchcraft to many of us is absurd 
only on the same ground that our grandfathers' gigs 
are absurd. It is felt preposterous to think of spiritual 
agencies in connection with ragged beldames soaring on 
broomsticks, in an age when it is known that mediums 
of communication with the invisible world are usually 
unctuous personages dressed in excellent broadcloth, 
who soar above the curtain-poles without any broom- 
stick, and who are not given to unprofitable intrigues. 
The enlightened imagination rejects the figure of a 
witch with her profile in dark relief against the moon 
and her broomstick cutting a constellation. I^o undis- 
covered natural laws, no names of "respectable" wit- 
9* 



162 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM! 

nesses, are invoked to make us feel our presumption in 
questioning the diabolic intimacies of that obsolete old 
woman, for it is known now that the undiscovered laws, 
and the witnesses qualified by the payment of income- 
tax, are all in favor of a different conception — the image 
of a heavy gentleman in boots and black coat-tails fore- 
shortened against the cornice. Yet no less a person 
than Sir Thomas Browne once wrote that those who 
denied there were witches, inasmuch as they thereby 
denied spirits also, were " obliquely and upon conse- 
quence a sort, not of infidels, but of atheists." At pres- 
ent, doubtless, in certain circles, unbelievers in heavy 
gentlemen who float in the air by means of undiscov- 
ered laws are also taxed with atheism ; illiberal as it is 
not to admit that mere weakness of understanding may 
prevent one from seeing how that phenomenon is neces- 
sarily involved in the divine origin of things. With 
still more remarkable parallelism, Sir Thomas Browme 
goes on : " Those that, to refute their incredulity, desire 
to see apparitions, shall questionless never behold any, 
nor have the power to be so much as wdtches. The 
devil hath made them already in a heresy as capital as 
witchcraft, and to ap;pear to them were hut to convert 
themP It would be difficult to see what has been 
changed here but the mere drapery of circumstance, if 
it were not for this prominent difference between our 
own days and the days of witchcraft, that instead of 
torturing, drowning, or burning the innocent, we give 
hospitality and large pay to — the highly distinguished 
medium. At least we are safely rid of certain horrors; 
but if the multitude — that " farraginous concurrence of 
all conditions, tempers, sexes, and ages " — do not roll 



lecky's histoey. 163 

back even to a superstition that carries cruelty in its 
train, it is not because they possess a cultivated reason, 
but because they are pressed upon and held up by 
what we may call an external reason — the sum of con- 
ditions resulting from the laws of material growth, from 
changes produced by great historical collisions shatter- 
ing the structures of ages and making new highways 
for events and ideas, and from the activities of higher 
minds no longer existing merely as opinions and teach- 
ing, but as institutions and organizations with which 
the interests, the affections, and the habits of the multi- 
tude are inextricably interwoven. No undiscovered 
laws accounting for small phenomena going forward 
under drawing-room tables are likely to affect the tre- 
mendous facts of the increase of population, the rejec- 
tion of convicts by our colonies, the exhaustion of the 
soil by cotton plantations, which urge even upon the 
foolish certain questions, certain claims, certain views 
concerning the scheme of the world, that can never 
again be silenced. If right reason is a right representa- 
tion of the coexistences and sequences of things, here 
are coexistences and sequences that do not wait to be 
discovered, but press themselves upon us like bars of 
iron. No seances at a guinea a head for the sake of 
being pinched by " Mary Jane " can annihilate rail- 
ways, steamships, and electric telegraphs, which are de- 
monstrating the interdependence of all human interests, 
and making self-interest a duct for sympathy. These 
things are part of the external reason to which internal 
silliness has inevitably to accommodate itself. 

Three points in the history of magic and witchcraft 
are well brought out by Mr. Lecky. First, that the 



164 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: 

cruelties connected with it did not begin until men's 
minds had ceased to I'epose implicitly in a sacramental 
system which made them feel well armed against evil 
spirits — that is, until the eleventh century, when there 
came a sort of morning dream of doubt and heresy, 
bringing on the one side the terror of timid consciences, 
and on the other the terrorism of authority or zeal bent 
on checking the rising struggle. In that time of com- 
parative mental repose, says Mr. Lecky — 

" All those conceptions of diabolical presence ; all that predis- 
position towards the miraculous, which acted so fearfully upon 
the imaginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed j 
but the implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity with 
which the virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered 
them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a little less su- 
perstitious, the effects of their superstition would have been much 
more terrible. It was firmly believed that any one who deviated 
from the strict line of orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the 
power of Satan ; but as there was no spirit of rebellion or doubt, 
this persuasion did not produce any extraordinary terrorism." 

The Church was disposed to confound heretical opin- 
ion with sorcery ; false doctrine was especially the 
devil's work, and it was a ready conclusion that a 
denier or innovator had held consultation with the 
father of lies. It is a saying of a zealous Catholic in 
the sixteenth century, quoted by Maury in his excellent 
work, " De la Magie" — '^Crescit eimi niagia hcBresis, 
cum hoeresi magia.'''' Even those who doubted were 
terrified at their doubts, for trust is more easily under« 
rained than terror. Fear is earlier born than hope, lays 
a stronger grasp on man's system than any other pas- 
sion, and remains master of a larger group of involuU' 



lecky's history. 165 

tary actions. A chief aspect of man's moral develop- 
ment is the slow subduing of fear by the gradual 
growth of intelligence, and its suppression as a motive 
by the presence of impulses less animally sellish ; so 
that in relation to invisible Power, fear at last ceases 
to exist, save in that interfusion with higher faculties 
which we call awe. 

Secondly, Mr. Lecky shows clearly that dogmatic Prot- 
estantism, holding the vivid belief in Satanic agency 
to be an essential of piety, would have felt it shame 
to be a whit behind Catholicism in severity against 
the devil's servants. Luther's sentiment was that he 
would not suffer a witch to live (he was not much more 
merciful to Jews) ; and, in spite of his fondness for 
children, believing a certain child to have been begotten 
by the devil, he recommended the parents to throw it 
into the river. The torch must be turned on the worst 
errors of heroic minds — not in irreverent ingratitude, 
but for the sake of measuring our vast and various 
debt to all the influences which have concurred, in the 
intervening ages, to make us recognize as detestable 
errors the honest convictions of men who, in mere in- 
dividual capacity and moral force, were very much 
above us. Again, the Scotch Puritans, during the com- 
paratively short period of their ascendency, surpassed all 
Christians before them in the elaborate ingenuity of 
the tortures they applied for the discovery of witch- 
craft and sorcery, and did their utmost to prove that 
if Scotch Calvinism was the true religion, the chief 
'' note " of the true religion was cruelty. It is hardly 
an endurable task to read the story of their doings; 
thoroughly to imagine them as a past reality is already 



166 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM : 

a sort of torture. One detail is enough, and it is a 
comparatively mild one. It was the regular profession 
of men called " prickers " to thrust long pins into the 
body of a suspected witch in order to detect the insen- 
sible spot which was the infallible sign of her guilt. 
On a superficial view one would be in danger of saying 
that the main difference between the teachers who sanc- 
tioned these things and the much - despised ancestors 
who offered human victims inside a huge wicker idol 
was that they arrived at a more elaborate barbarity 
by a longer series of dependent propositions. I do not 
share Mr. Buckle's opinion that a Scotch minister's 
groans were a part of his deliberate plan for keeping 
the people in a state of terrified subjection ; the minis- 
ters themselves held the belief they taught, and might 
well groan over it. What a blessing has a little false 
logic been to the world ! Seeing that men are so slow 
to question their premises, they must have made each 
other much more miserable, if pity had not sometimes 
drawn tender conclusion not warranted by Major and 
Minor; if there had not been people with an amiable 
imbecility of reasoning which enabled them at once to 
cling to hideous beliefs, and to be conscientiously incon- 
sistent with them in their conduct. There is nothing 
like acute deductive reasoning for keeping a man in the 
dark : it might be called the technique of the intellect, 
and the concentration of the mind upon it corresponds 
to that predominance of technical skill in art which 
ends in degradation of the artist's function, unless new 
inspiration and invention come to guide it. 

And of this there is some good illustration furnished 
by that third node in the history of witchcraft, the be- 



lecky's history. 167 

ginning of its end, which is treated in an interesting 
manner by Mr. Lecky. It is worth noticing, that the 
most important defences of the belief in witchcraft, 
against the growing scepticism in the latter part of the 
sixteenth century and in the seventeenth, were the pro- 
ductions of men who in some departments were among 
the foremost thinkers of their time. One of them was 
Jean Bodin, the famous writer on government and juris- 
prudence, whose " Republic," Hallam thinks, had an im- 
portant influence in England, and furnished " a store of 
arguments and examples that were not lost on the 
thoughtful minds of our countrymen." In some of his 
views he was original and bold ; for example, he antici- 
pated Montesquieu in attempting to appreciate the rela- 
tions of government and climate. Hallam inclines to 
the opinion that he was a Jew, and attached divine au- 
thority only to the Old Testament. But this was enough 
to furnish him with his chief data for the existence of 
witches and for their capital punishment ; and in the 
account of his " Republic " given by Hallam, there is 
enough evidence that the sagacity which often enabled 
him to make fine use of his learning was also often en- 
tangled in it, to temper our surprise at finding a writer 
on political science of whom it could be said that, along 
with Montesquieu, he was " the most philosophical of 
those who had read so deeply, the most learned of those 
who had thought so much," in the van of the forlorn 
hope to maintain the reality of witchcraft. It should 
be said that he was equally confident of the unreality 
of the Copernican hypothesis, on the ground that it was 
contrary to the tenets of the theologians and philoso- 
phers and to common-sense, and therefore subversive 



168 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: 

ot tlie foundations of every science. Of his work on 

witchcraft, Mr. Lecky says : 

''The 'D^raouomanie des Sorciers' is chiefly an appeal to authority, 
which the author deemed on this subject so unanimous and so con- 
clusive that it was scarcely possible for any sane man to resist it. 
He appealed to the popular belief in all countries, in all ages, and 
in all religious. He cited the opinions of an immense multitude of 
the greatest writers of pagan antiquity, and of the most illustrious 
of the Fathers. He showed how the laws of all nations recognized 
the existence of witchcraft ; and he collected hundreds of cases 
which had been investigated before the tribunals of his own or of 
other couutries. He relates with the most minute and circum- 
stantial detail, and with the most imfaltering confidence, all the 
proceedings at the witches' Sabbath, the methods which the witches 
employed iu transporting themselves through the air, their trans- 
formations, their carnal intercourse with the Devil, their various 
means of injuring their enemies, the signs that lead to their detec- 
tion, their confessions when condemned, and their demeanor at the 
stake." 

Something must be allowed for a lawyer's affection 
towards a belief which had furnished so many " cases." 
Bodin's work had been immediately prompted by the 
treatise " De Prestigiis Dsemonum," written by John 
Wier, a German physician — a treatise which is worth 
notice as an example of a transitional form of opinion 
for wliich many analogies may be found in the history 
both of religion and science. Wier believed in demons, 
and in possession by demons, but his practice as a physi- 
cian had convinced him that the so-called witches were 
patients and victims, that the devil took advantage of 
their diseased condition to delude them, and that there 
was no consent of an evil will on the part of the women. 
lie argued that the word in Leviticus translated " witch " 
meant " poisoner," and besought the princes of Europe 



lecky's history. 169 

to hinder the further spilling of innocent blood. These 
heresies of Wier threw Bodin into such a state of amazed 
indignation, that if he had been an ancient Jew instead 
of a modern economical one, he would have rent his 
garment. "No one had ever heard of pardon being 
accorded to sorcerers ;" and probably the reason why 
Charles IX. died young was because he had pardoned 
the sorcerer Trois Echelles ! We must remember that 
this was in 1581, when the great scientific movement of 
the Renaissance had hardly begun — when Galileo was a 
youth of seventeen, and Kepler a boy of ten. 

But directly afterwards, on the other side, came Mon- 
taigne, whose sceptical acuteness could arrive at nega- 
tives without any apparatus of method. A certain keen 
narrowness of nature will secure a man from many ab- 
surd beliefs which the larger soul, vibrating to more 
manifold influences, would have a long struggle to part 
w^ith. And so we find the charming, chatty Montaigne 
— in one of the brightest of his essays, " Des Boiteux," 
where he declares that, from his own observation of 
witches and sorcerers, he should have recommended them 
to be treated with curative hellebore — stating in his 
own way a pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely. 
It seems to him much less of a prodigy that men should 
lie, or that their imaginations should deceive them, than 
that a human body should be carried through the air on 
a broomstick, or up a chimney by some unknown spirit. 
He thinks it a sad business to persuade one's self that 
the test of truth lies in the multitude of believers — " en 
une presse oil les fols surpassent de tant les sages en 
nombre." Ordinarily, he has observed, when men nave 
something stated to them as a fact, they are more ready 

8 



170 THE mFLUENCE OF KATIONALISM J 

to explain it than to inquire whether it is real: "lis 
passent par-dessus les propositions^ mais ils examinfent 
les consequences ; ils laissent lea choses, et eourent aux 
causes,'''' There is a sort of strong and generous igno- 
rance which is as honorable and courageous as science— 
" ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n'j a pas moins 
de science qu'a concevoir la science." And d jpropos 
of the immense traditional evidence which weighed 
with such men as Bodin, he says : "As for the proofs 
and arguments founded on experience and facts, I do 
not pretend to unravel these. What end of a thread is 
there to lay hold of % I often cut them as Alexander 
did his knot. Ajpres tout, c^est mettre ses conjectures d 
Men hautpriXy que d^ en f aire cuire un homme tout vifP 
Writing like this, when it finds eager readers, is a sign 
that the weather is changing ; yet much later, namely, 
after 1665, when the Royal Society had been founded, 
our own Glanvil, the author of the " Scepsis Scientifica," 
a work that was a remarkable advance towards a true 
definition of the limits of inquiry, and that won him his 
election as fellow of the society, published an energetic 
vindication of the belief in witchcraft, of which Mr. 
Lecky gives the following sketch : 

"The ' Sadducisraus Triumphatus/ which is probably the ablest 
book ever published in defence of the superstition, opens with a 
strikiug picture of the rapid progress of the scepticism in England. 
Everywhere^ a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in 
the upper classes ; but it was a disbelief that arose entirely from a 
strong sense of its antecedent improbability. All who were oj)- 
posed to the orthodox faith united in discrediting witchcraft. They 
Jaugbed at it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque 
and ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible that it would 
be a waste of time to examine it. This spirit had arisen since the 



lecky's histoey. 171 

Restoration, although the laws were still in force, and although 
little or no direct reasoning had been brought to bear upon the 
subject. In order to combat it, Glanvil proceeded to examine the 
general question of the credibility of the miraculous. He saw that 
the reason why witchcraft was ridiculed was, because it was a phase 
of the miraculous and the work of the Devil ; that the scepticism 
was chiefly due to those who disbelieved in miracles and the Devil ; 
and that the instances of witchcraft, or possession, in the Bible were 
invariably placed on a level with those that were tried in the law 
courts of England. That the evidence of the belief was overwhelm- 
ing, he firmly believed — and this, indeed, was scarcely disputed ; 
but, until the sense of a priori improbability was removed, no pos- 
sible accumulation of facts would cause men to believe it. To that 
task he accordingly addressed himself. Anticipating the idea and 
almost the words of modern controversialists, he urged that there 
was such a thing as a credulity of unbelief; and that those who 
believed so strange a concurrence of delusions, as was necessary on 
the supposition of the unreality of witchcraft, were far more credu- 
lous than those who accepted the belief. He made his very scep- 
ticism his principal weapon ; and, analyzing with much acuteness 
the a priori objections, he showed that they rested upon an unwar- 
rantable confidence in our knowledge of the laws of the spirit 
world ; that they implied the existence of some strict analogy be- 
tween the faculties of men and of spirits ; and that, as such analogy 
most probably did not exist, no reasoniug based on the supposition 
could dispense men from examining the evidence. He concluded 
with a large collection of cases, the evidence of which was, as he 
thought, incontestable." 

We have quoted this sketch because Glanvil's argu- 
ment against the d priori objection of absurdity is fa- 
tiguingly urged in relation to other alleged marvels 
which, to busy people seriously occupied with the diffi- 
culties of affairs, of science, or of art, seem as little wor- 
thy of examination as aeronautic broomsticks. And also 
because we here see Glanvil, in combating an incredulity 



172 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: 

that does not happen to be his own, wielding that very 
amnment of traditional evidence which he had made the 
subject of vigorous attack in his " Scepsis Scientifica." 
But perhaps large minds have been peculiarly liable to 
this fluctuation concerning the sphere of tradition, be- 
cause, while they have attacked its misapplications, they 
have been the more solicited by the vague sense that 
tradition is really the basis of our best life. Our senti- 
ments may be called organized traditions; and a large 
part of our actions gather all their justification, all their 
attraction and aroma, from the memory of the life lived, 
of the actions done, before we were born. In the ab- 
sence of any profound research into psychological func- 
tions or into the mysteries of inheritance, in the absence 
of any comprehensive view of man's historical develop- 
ment and the dependence of one age on another, a mind 
at all rich in sensibilities must always have had an in- 
definite uneasiness in an undistinguishing attack on the 
coercive influence of tradition. And this may be the 
apology for the apparent inconsistency of Glanvil's acute 
criticism on the one side, and his indignation at the 
"looser gentry," who laughed at the evidences for 
witchcraft, on the other. We have alreadj^ taken up 
too much space with this subject of witchcraft, else we 
should be tempted to dwell on Sir Thomas Browne, 
who far surpassed Glanvil in magnificent incongruity of 
opinion, and whose works are the most remarkable com- 
bination existing of witty sarcasm against ancient non- 
sense and modern obsequiousness, with indications of a 
capacious credulity. After all, we may be sharing what 
seems to us the hardness of these men, who sat in their 
studies and argued at their ease about a belief that would 



/ 



lecky's history. 173 

be reckoned to have caused more misery and bloodshed 
than any other superstition, if there had been no such 
thing as persecution on the ground of religious opinion. 
On this subject of Persecution, Mr. Lecky writes his 
best : with clearness of conception, with calm justice, 
bent on appreciating the necessary tendency of ideas, 
and with an appropriateness of illustration that could 
be supplied only by extensive and intelligent readinp 
Persecution, he shows, is not in any sense peculiar to the 
Catholic Church ; it is a direct sequence of the doctrines 
that salvation is to be had only within the Church, and 
that erroneous belief is damnatory — doctrines held as 
fully by Protestant sects as by the Catholics ; and, in 
proportion to its power. Protestantism has been as per- 
secuting as Catholicism. He maintains, in opposition 
to the favorite modern notion of persecution defeating 
its own object, that the Church, holding the dogma of 
exclusive salvation, was perfectly consequent, and really 
achieved its end of spreading one belief and quenching 
another by calling in the aid of the civil arm. Who 
will say that governments, by their power over institu- 
tions and patronage, as well as over punishment, have 
not power also over the interests aud inclinations of 
men, and over most of those external conditions into 
which subjects are born, and whicli make them adopt 
the prevalent belief as a second nature ? Hence, to a 
sincere believer in the doctrine of exclusive salvation, 
governments had it in their power to save men from 
perdition ; and wherever the clergy were at the elbow 
of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic 
or Protestant, persecution was the result. "Compel 
them to come in " was a rule that seemed sanctioned by 



174 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM I 

mercy, and the horrible sufferings it led men to inflict 
seemed small to minds accustomed to contemplate, as a 
perpetual source of motive, the eternal unmitigated mis- 
eries of a hell that was the inevitable destination of a 
majority among mankind. 

It is a significant fact, noted by Mr. Lecky, that the 
only two leaders of the Reformation who advocated tol- 
erance were Zuinglius and Socinus, both of them disbe- 
lievers in exclusive salvation. And in corroboration of 
other evidence that the chief triumphs of the Reforma- 
tion were due to coercion, he commends to the special 
attention of his readers the following quotation from a 
work attributed without question to the famous Protes- 
tant theologian, Jurieu, who had himself been hindered, 
as a Protestant, from exercising his professional func- 
tions in France, and was settled as pastor at Rotterdam. 
It should be remembered that Jurieu's labors fell in the 
latter part of the seventeenth century and in the begin- 
ning of the eighteenth, and that he was the contempo- 
rary of Bayle, with whom he was in bitter controversial 
hostility. He wrote, then, at the time when there was 
warm debate on the question of Toleration ; and it was 
his great object to vindicate himself and his French 
fellow-Protestants from all laxity on this point : 

" Pent-ou nier que le paganisme est tomb6 daus le monde par 
Fautorit^ des empereurs Romaius ? On peut assurer sans teraeritd 
que le paganisme seroit eucore debout, et que les trois quarts de 
I'Europe seroient encore payens si Constantin et ses successeurs 
u'avaieut employ^ leur autorit^ pour I'abolir. Mais, je vous prie, 
de quelles voies Dieu s'est-il servi dans ces deruiers siecles pour r6- 
tablir la veritable religion dans I'Occident? Les rois de Suede, 
ceux de Danemarck^ ceux W Angleterre^ les magistrats souvet'aina de Suisse, 



LECKY^S HISTORY, 175 

ies Pais Bas, des vill^ libres d'Ailemagne, les princes electeurSj et au- 
tres princes souverains de I'empiref n'ont-iU pas emploid leur autoritd 
pour abbattre h Papisme f" 

Indeed, wherever the tremendous alternative of ever- 
lasting torments is believed in — believed in so that it 
becomes a motive determining the life — not only perse- 
cution, but every other form of severity and gloom are 
the legitimate consequences. There is much ready dec- 
lamation in these days against the spirit of asceticism 
and against the zeal of doctrinal conversion ; but surely 
the macerated form of a Saint Francis, the fierce denun- 
ciations of a Saint Dominic, the groans and prayerful 
wrestlings of the Puritan who seasoned his bread with 
tears and made all pleasurable sensation sin, are more in 
keeping with the contemplation of unending anguish as 
the destiny of a vast multitude whose nature we share, 
than the rubicund cheerfulness of some modern divines, 
who profess to unite a smiling liberalism with a well- 
bred and tacit but unshaken confidence in the reality of 
the bottomless pit. But in fact, as Mr. Lecky maintains, 
that awful image, with its group of associated dogmas 
concerning the inherited curse, and the damnation of un- 
baptized infants, of heathens, and of heretics, has passed 
away from what he is fond of calling " the realizations'* 
of Christendom. These things are no longer the objects 
of practical belief. They may be mourned for in en- 
cyclical letters ; bishops may regret them ; doctors of 
divinity may sign testimonials to the excellent character 
of these decayed beliefs ; but for the mass of Christians 
they are no more influential than unrepealed but forgot- 
ten statutes. And with these dogmas has melted away 
the strong basis for the defence of persecution. Iso 



176 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: 

man now writes eager vindications of himself and Ms 
colleagues from the suspicion of adhering to the princi- 
ple of toleration. And this momentous change, it is Mr. 
Lecky's object to show, is due to that concurrence of 
conditions which he has chosen to call " the advance 
of the Spirit of Rationalism." 

In other parts of his work, where he attempts to trace 
the action of the same conditions on the acceptance of 
miracles and on other chief phases of our historical de- 
velopment, Mr. Lecky has laid himself open to consider- 
able criticism. The chapters on the Miracles of the 
Church, the aesthetic, scientific, and moral Development 
of Rationalism, the Secularization of Politics, and the 
Industrial History of Rationalism, embrace a wide range 
of diligently gathered facts ; but they are nowhere illu- 
minated by a sufficiently clear conception and statement 
of the agencies at work, or the mode of their action, in 
the gradual modification of opinion and of life. The 
writer frequently impresses us as being in a state of 
hesitation concerning his own standing-point, which 
may form a desirable stage in private meditation, but 
not in published exposition. Certain epochs in theo- 
retic conception, certain considerations, which should be 
fundamental to his survey, are introduced quite inci- 
dentally in a sentence or two, or in a note which seems 
to be an after-thought. Great writers and their ideas 
are touched upon too slightly and with too little dis- 
crimination, and important theories are sometimes 
characterized with a rashness which conscientious revis- 
ion will correct. There is a fatiguing use of vague or 
shifting phrases, such as '^ modern civilization," '' spirit 
of the age," "tone of thought," "intellectual type of 



lecky's history. 177 

the age." " bias of the imagination," '^ habits of religions 
thought/' unbalanced by any precise definition ; and the 
spirit of rationalism is sometimes treated of as if it lay 
outside the specific mental activities of which it is a gen- 
eralized expression. Mr. Curdle's famous definition of 
the dramatic unities as "a sort of a general oneness" is 
not totally false ; but such luminousness as it has could 
only be perceived by those who already knew what the 
unities were. Mr. Lecky has the advantage of being 
strongly impressed wuth the great part played by the 
emotions in the formation of opinion, and with the high 
complexity of the causes at work in social evolution ; 
but he frequently writes as if he had never yet distin- 
guished between the complexity of the conditions that 
produce prevalent states of mind, and the inability of 
particular minds to give distinct reasons for the prefer- 
ences or persuasions produced by those states. In brief, 
he does not discriminate, or does not help his reader to 
discriminate, between objective complexity and subjec- 
tive confusion. But the most muddle-headed gentle- 
man who represents the spirit of the age by observing, 
as he settles his collar, that the development-theory is 
quite " the thing," is a result of definite processes, if we 
could only trace them. "Mental attitudes "and " pre- 
dispositions," however vague in consciousness, have not 
vague causes, any more than the " blind motions of the 
spring" in plants and animals. 

The word "Rationalism" has the misfortune, shared 
by most words in this gi'ay world, of being somewhat 
equivocal. This evil may be nearly overcome by care- 
ful preliminary definition ; but Mr. Lecky does not sup- 
ply this, and the original specific application of the word 
10 8* 



178 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM: LECKy's HISTORY. 

to a particular phrase of Biblical interpretation seems to 
have clung about his use of it with a misleading effect. 
Through some parts of his book he appears to regard 
the grand characteristic of modern thought and civili- 
zation, compared with ancient, as a radiation in the first 
instance from a change in religious conceptions. The 
supremely important fact, that the gradual reduction of 
all phenomena within the sphere of established law, 
which carries as a consequence the rejection of the mi- 
raculous, has its determining current in the development 
of physical science, seems to have engaged comparative- 
ly little of his attention ; at least, he gives it no promi- 
nence. The great conception of universal regular se- 
quence, without partiality and without caprice — the con- 
ception which is the most potent force at work in the 
modification of our faith, and of the practical form gi'j- 
en to our sentiments — could only grow out of that pa- 
tient watching of external fact, and that silencing of 
preconceived notions, which are urged upon the mind 
by the problems of physical science. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: RIEHL 

It is an interesting branch of psychological observa- 
tion to note the images that are habitually associated 
with abstract or collective terms — what may be called 
the picture-writing of the mind, which it carries on con- 
currently with the more subtile symbolism of language. 
Perhaps the fixity or variety of these associated images 
would furnish a tolerably fair test of the amount of 
concrete knowledge and experience which a given word 
represents, in the minds of two persons who use it with 
equal familiarity. The word railways, for e^rample, 
will probably call up, in the mind of a man who is not 
liighly locomotive, the image either of a " Bradshaw," 
or of the station with which he is most familiar, or of 
an indefinite length of tram-road; he will alternate 
between these tliree images, which represent his stock 
of concrete acquaintance with railways. But suppose 
a man to have had successively the experience of a 
" navvy," an engineer, a traveller, a railway director and 
shareholder, and a landed proprietor in treaty with a 
railway company, and it is probable that the range of 
images which would by turns present themselves to his 
mind at the mention of the woi'd "railways" would in- 
clude all the essential facts in the existence and rela- 
tions of the thing. Now it is possible for the first-men- 
tioned personage to entertain very expanded views as 



180 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 

to the multiplication of railways in the abstract, and 
their ultitiiate function in civilization, lie may talk of 
a vast network of railways stretching over the globe, of 
future "lines" in Madagascar, and elegant refreshment- 
rooms in the Sandwich Islands, with none the less glib- 
iiess because his distinct conceptions on the subject do 
not extend beyond his one station and his indefinite 
length of tram-road. But it is evident that if we w^ant 
a railway to be made, or its affairs to be managed, this 
man of wide views and narrow observation will not 
serve onr purpose. 

Probably, if we could ascertain the images called up 
by the terms " the people," " the masses," " tlie prole- 
tariat," " the peasantry," by many who theorize on those 
bodies with eloquence, or who legislate for them with- 
out eloquence, we should find that they indicate almost 
as small an amount of concrete knowledge — tlmt they 
are as far from completely representing the complex 
facts summed up in the collective term, as the railway 
imasres of our non-locomotive o^entleman. How little 
the real characteristics of the working-classes are known 
to those who are outside them, how little their natural 
history has been studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our 
art as well as by our political and social theories. Where, 
in our picture exhibitions, shall we find a group of true 
peasantry? What English artist even attempts to rival 
in truthfulness such studies of popular life as the pict- 
ures of Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo ? Even 
one of the greatest painters of the pre-eminently real- 
istic school, while, in his picture of " The Hireling Shep- 
herd," he gave us a landscape of marvellous truthful- 
ness, placed a pair of peasants in the foreground who 



RIEHL. 181 

were not much more real than the idyllic swains and 
damsels of our chimney ornaments. Only a total ab- 
sence of acquaintance and sympathy with our peasantry 
could give a moment's popularity to such a picture as 
" Cross Purposes," where we have a peasant girl who 
looks as if she knew L. E. L.'s poems by heart, and Eng- 
lish rustics, whose costume seems to indicate that they 
are meant for ploughmen, with exotic features that re- 
mind us of a handsome primo tenore. Rather than such 
Cockney sentimentality as this, as an education for the 
taste and sympathies, we prefer the most crapulous 
group of boors that Teniers ever painted. But even 
those among our painters who aim at giving the rustic 
type of features, who are far above the effeminate fee- 
bleness of the " Keepsake " style, treat their subjects 
under the influence of traditions and prepossessions 
rather than of direct observation. The notion that peas- 
ants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a 
man in a smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and 
showing a row of sound teeth, that cottage matrons are 
usually buxom, and village children necessarily rosy and 
merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from the ar- 
tistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature 
instead of life. The painter is still under the influence 
of idyllic literature, which has always expressed the im- 
agination of the cultivated and townbred, rather than 
tlie truth of rustic life. Idyllic ploughmen are jocund 
when they drive their team afield ; idyllic shepherds 
make bashful love under hawthorn-bushes ; idyllic vil- 
lagers dance in the chequered shade and refresh them- 
selves, not immoderately, with spicy nut-brown ale. But 
lio one who has seen much of actual ploughmen thinks 



182 NATURAL HISTOET OF GERMAN LIFE I 

them jocund ; no one who is well acquainted with the 
English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The 
slow gaze, in which no sense of beauty beams, no humor 
twinkles, the slow utterance, and the heavy, slouching 
walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal the 
camel, than of the sturdy countryman, with striped 
stockings, red waistcoat, and hat aside, who represents 
the traditional English peasant. Observe a company of 
haymakers. When you see them at a distance, tossing 
up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the 
wagon creeps slowly wdth its increasing burden over 
the meadow, and the bright green space which tells of 
work done gets larger and larger, you pronounce the 
scene " smiling," and you think these companions in 
labor must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to 
which they give animation. Approach nearer, and you 
will certainly find that haymaking -time is a time for 
joking, especially if there are women among the labor- 
ers ; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and 
then, and expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as 
possible from your conception of idyllic merriment. 
That delicious effervescence of the mind which we call 
fun, has no equivalent for the northern peasant, except 
tipsy revelry ; the only realm of fancy and imagination 
for the English clown exists at the bottom of the third 
quart-pot. 

The conventional countr3^man of the stage, who picks 
up pocket-books and never looks into them, and who is 
too simple even to know that honesty has its opposite, 
represents the still lingering mistake that an unintel- 
ligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that 
slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It 



RIEHL. 183 

is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of 
any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less 
likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and 
pocket ; a reaper is not given to writing begging-let- 
ters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairymaid 
into filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish 
instincts are not subdued by the sight of buttercups, 
nor is integrity in the least established by that classic 
rural occupation, sheep- washing. To make men moral, 
something more is requisite than to turn them out to 
grass. 

Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin's 
indignation, are surely too frank an idealization to be 
misleading ; and since popular chorus is one of the most 
effective elements of the opera, we can hardly object to 
lyric rustics in elegant laced bodices and picturesque 
motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of 
colliers in their pit costume, or a ballet of charwomen 
and stocking-weavers. But our social novels profess to 
represent the people as they are, and the unreality of 
their representations is a grave evil. The greatest bene- 
fit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novel- 
ist, is the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded 
on generalizations and statistics require a s^^mpathy 
ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity ; but 
a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, 
surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that atten- 
tion to w^hat is apart from themselves, which may be 
called the raw material of moral sentiment. When Scott 
takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's cottage, or tells the 
story of " The Two Drovers," when Wordsworth sings 
to us the revery of " Poor Susan," when Kingsley 



184 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE! 

shows US Alton Locke gazing yearningly over the gate 
which leads from the highway into the first wood he 
ever saw, when Hornnng paints a group of chimney- 
sweepers — more is done towards linking the higher 
classes with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgar- 
ity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of sermons and 
philosophical dissertations. Art is the nearest thing to 
life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extend- 
ing our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds 
of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of 
the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the 
People. Falsification here is far more pernicious than 
in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not so very 
serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent 
fashions — about the manners and conversation of beaux 
and duchesses; but it is serious that our sympathy with 
the perennial joys and struggles, the toil, the tragedy, 
and the humor in the life of our more heavily laden 
fellow-men, should be perverted, and turned towards a 
false object instead of the true one. 

This perversion is not the less fatal because the mis- 
representation which gives rise to it has what the artist 
considers a moral end. The thing for mankind to know 
is, not what are the motives and infinences which the 
moralist thinks oright to act on the laborer or the artisan, 
but what are the motives and influences which do act 
on him. We want to be taught to feel, not for the 
heroic artisan or the sentimental peasant, but for the 
peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan in all 
his suspicious selfishness. 

We have one great novelist who is gifted with the 
Utnjost power of rendering the external traits of our 



RIEHL. 185 

town population ; and if he could give us their psycho- 
logical character — their conceptions of life, and their 
emotions — with the same truth as their idiom and man- 
ners, his books w^ould be the greatest contribution art 
has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies. 
But while he can copy Mrs. Plornish's colloquial style 
with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while there 
is the same startling inspiration in his description of 
the gestures and phrases of " Boots," as in the speeches 
of Shakespeare's mobs or numskulls, he scarcely ever 
passes from the humorous and external to the emotional 
and tragic, without becoming as transcendent in his un- 
reality as he was a moment before in his artistic truth- 
fulness. But for the precious salt of his humor, which 
compels him to reproduce external traits that serve, in 
some degree, as a corrective to his frequently false psy- 
chology, his preternaturally virtuous poor children and 
artisans, his melodramatic boatmen and courtesans, would 
be as noxious as Eugene Sue's idealized proletaires in 
encouraging the miserable fallacy that high morality 
and refined sentiment can grow out of harsh social re- 
lations, ignorance, and want ; or that the working-classes 
are in a condition to enter at once into a millennial state 
of altruism^ wherein every one is caring for every one 
else, and no one for himself. 

If we need a true conception of the popular character 
to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to 
check our theories, and direct us in their application. 
The tendency created by the splendid conquests of mod- 
ern generalization, to believe that all social questions are 
merged in economical science, and tha^ the relations 
of men to their neighbors may be settled bv algebraic 



186 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE! 

equations, the dream that the nhe«lt'ured classes are 
prepared for a condition which appeals principally to 
their moral sensibilities ; the aristocratic dilettanteism 
which attempts to restore the " good old times " by a 
sort of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity 
and veneration as we grow prize turnips, by an artificial 
system of culture, none of these . diverging mistakes 
can coexist with a real knowledge of the people, with a 
thorough study of their habits, their ideas, their motives. 
The landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the min- 
ing-agent, have each an opportunity for making precious 
observations on different sections of the working-classes ; 
but unfortunately their experience is too often not reg- 
istered at all, or its results are too scattered to be avail- 
able as a source of information and stimulus to the pub- 
lic mind generally. If any man of sufficient moral and 
intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be 
vitiated by a foregone conclusion, or by a professional 
point of view, would devote himself to studying the 
natural history of our social classes, especially of the 
small shopkeepers, artisans, and peasantry, the degree 
in which they are infiuenced by local conditions, their 
maxims and habits, the points of view from which they 
regard their religious teachers, and the degree in which 
they are influenced by religious doctrines, the interac- 
tion of the various classes on each other, and what are 
the tendencies in their position towards disintegration 
or towards development ; and if, after all this study, he 
would give us the result of his observations in a book 
well nourished with specific facts, his work would be a 
valuable aid to the social and political reformer. 

What we are desiring for ourselves has been in some 



EIEHL. 187 

degree done for the Germans by Eielil, the author of 
the very remarkable books the titles of which are placed 
at the bottom of this page ;* and we wish to make these 
books known to our readers, not only for the sake of the 
interesting matter they contain and the important re- 
flections the}^ suggest, but also as a model for some fut- 
ure or actual student of our own people. By way of 
introducing Kiehl to those who are unacquainted with 
his writings, we will give a rapid sketch from his pict- 
ure of the German Peasantry, and perhaps this indica- 
tion of the mode in which he treats a particular branch 
of his subject may prepare them to follow us with more 
interest when we enter on the general purpose and con- 
tents of his works. 

In England, at present, when we speak of the peasant- 
ry, we mean scarcely more than the class of farm-ser- 
vants and farm-laborers ; and it is only in the most 
primitive districts — as in Wales, for example — that farm- 
ers are included under the term. In order to appre- 
ciate what Riehl says of the German peasantry, we must 
remember what the tenant-farmers and small proprietors 
were in England half a century ago, when the master 
helped to milk his own cows, and the daughters got up 
at one o'clock in the morning to brew ; when the family 
dined in the kitchen with the servants, and sat with 
them round the kitchen fire in the evening. In those 
days, the quarried parlor was innocent of a carpet, and 
its only specimens of art were a framed sampler and the 
best tea-board ; the daughters even of substantial farm- 

* '• Die Burgerliche Gesellschaft," von W. H. Riehl. Dritte Au- 
flage, 1855. 

''Land und Leute," vou W. H. Riehl. Dritte Auflage, 1856. 



188 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 

ers liad often no greater accomplishment in writing 
and spelling than they could procure at a dame-school ; 
and, instead of carrying on sentimental correspondence, 
they were spinning their future table-linen, and looking 
after every saving in butter and eggs that might enable 
them to add to the little stock of plate and china which 
they were laying in against their marriage. In our own 
day, setting aside the superior order of farmers, whose 
style of living and mental culture are often equal to that 
of the professional class in provincial towns, we can 
hardly enter the least imposing farm-house without find- 
ing a bad piano in the " drawing-room," and some old 
annuals, disposed with a symmetrical imitation of negli- 
gence, on the table ; though the daughters may still 
drop their A's, their vowels are studiously narrow ; and 
it is only in very primitive regions that they will con- 
sent to sit in a covered vehicle without springs, which 
was once thought an advance in luxury on the pillion. 

The condition of the tenant-farmers and small pro- 
prietors in Germany is, w^e imagine, about on a par — not, 
certainly, in material prosperity, but in mental culture 
and habits — with that of the old English farmers who 
were beginning to be thought old-fashioned nearly fifty 
years ago ; and if we add to these the farm servants and 
laborers, we shall have a class approximating in its char- 
acteristics to the Bauernthuin^ or peasantry, described 
by Eiehl. 

In Germany, perhaps more than in any other country, 
it is among the peasantry that we must look for the his- 
torical type of the Y\^i\ox\2^. physique. In the towns this 
type has become so modified to express the personality of 
the individual, that even "family likeness" is often but 



EIEHL. 189 

faintly marked. But the peasants may still be distin- 
guished into groups by their physical peculiarities. In 
one part of the country we find a longer-legged, in 
another a broader-shouldered race, which has inherited 
these peculiarities for centuries. For example, in cer- 
tain districts of Hesse are seen long faces, with high 
foreheads, long, straight noses, and small eyes with arched 
eyebrows and large eyelids. On comparing these phys- 
iognomies with the sculptures in the church of St. 
Elizabeth, at Marburg, executed in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, it will be found that the same old Hessian type of 
face has subsisted unchanged, with this distinction only, 
that the sculptures represent princes and nobles, whose 
features then bore the stamp of their race, while that 
stamp is now to be found only among the peasants. A 
painter who wants to draw mediaeval characters with 
historic truth must seek his models among the peasant- 
ry. This explains why the old German painters gave 
the heads of their subjects a greater uniformity of type 
than the painters of our day ; the race had not attained 
to a high degree of individualization in features and ex- 
pression. It indicates, too, that the cultured man acts 
more as an individual ; the peasant, more as one of a 
group. Hans drives the plough, lives, and thinks just 
as Kunz does; and it is this fact, that many thousands 
of men are as like each other in thoughts and habits as 
so many sheep or oysters, which constitutes the weight 
of the peasantry in the social and political scale. 

In the cultivated world each individual has his style 
of speaking and writing. But among the peasantry it 
is the race, tlie district, the province, that has its styde 
— namely, its dialect, its phraseology, its proverbs, and 



190 NATUKAL HISTORY OF GEEMAN LIFE : 

its songs, which belong alike to the entire body of the 
people. This provincial style of the peasant is again, 
like \\m pJiysique, a remnant of history to which he clings 
with the utmost tenacity. In certain parts of Hungary 
there are still descendants of German colonists of the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who go about the coun- 
try as reapers, retaining their old Saxon songs and man- 
ners, while the more cultivated German emigrants in a 
very short time forget their own language, and speak 
Hungarian. Another remarkable case of the same kind 
is that of the Wends, a Sclavonic race settled in Lusa- 
tia, whose numbers amount to 200,000, living either 
scattered among the German population or in separate 
parishes. They have their own schools and churches, 
and are taught in the Sclavonic tongue. The Catholics 
among them are rigid adherents of the Pope ; the Prot- 
estants not less rigid adherents of Luther, or Doctor 
Luther, as they are particular in calling him — a custom 
which, a hundred years ago, was universal in Protestant 
Germany. The Wend clings tenaciously to the usages 
of his Church, and perhaps this may contribute not a 
little to the purity in which he maintains the specific 
characteristics of his race. German education, German 
law and government, service in the standing army, and 
many other agencies, are in antagonism to his natural 
exclusiveness ; but the loives and tnothers here, as else- 
where, are a conservative influence, and the habits tem- 
porarily laid aside in the outer world are recovered by 
the fireside. The Wends form several stout regiments 
in the Saxon army ; they are sought far and wide as 
diligent and honest servants ; and many a weakly Dres- 
den or Leipzig child becomes thriving under the care of 



RIEHL. 191 

a Wundlsh nurse. In their villages they have the i.li^ 
and habits of genuine, sturdy peasants, and all their cus- 
toms indicate that they have been, from the first, an 
agricultural people. For example, they have traditional 
modes of treating their domestic animals. Each cow 
has its own name, generally chosen carefully, so as to 
express the special qualities of the animal ; and all im- 
portant family events are narrated to the hees — a custom 
which is found also in Westphalia. Whether by the 
help of the bees or not, the Wend farming is especially 
prosperous; and when a poor Bohemian peasant has a 
son born to him, he binds him to the end of a long pole 
and turns his face towards Lusatia, that he may be as 
lucky as the Wends who live there. 

The peculiarity of the peasant's language consists 
chiefly in his retention of historical peculiarities, which 
gradually disappear under the friction of cultivated cir- 
cles. He prefers any proper name that may be given 
to a day in the calendar rather than the abstract date, 
by which he very rarely reckons. In the baptismal 
names of his children he is guided by the old custom of 
the country, not at all by whim and fancy. Many old 
baptismal names, formerly common in Germany, would 
have become extinct but for their pi'eservation among 
the peasantry, especially in North Germany ; and so 
' firmly have they adhered to local tradition in this raat- 
I ter that it would be possible to give a sort of topo- 
I graphical statistics of proper names, and distinguish a 
j district by its rustic names as we do by its flora and 
fauna. The continuous inheritance of certain favorite 
proper names in a family, in some districts, forces the 
peasant to adopt the princely custom of attaching a 



192 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE". 

numeral to the name, and saying, when three genera- 
tions are living at once, Hans I., II., and III. ; or, in the 
more antique fashion, Hans the elder, the middle, and 
the younger. In some of our English counties there is 
a similar adherence to a narrow range of proper names ; 
and as a mode of distinguishing collateral branches in 
the same family, you will hear of Jonathan's Bess, 
Thomas's Bess, and Samuel's Bess — the three Bossies 
being cousins. 

The peasant's adherence to the traditional has much 
greater inconvenience than that entailed by a paucity 
of proper names. In the Black Forest and in Hutten- 
berg you will see him in the dog-days wearing a thick 
fur cap, because it is an historical fur cap — a cap worn 
by his grandfather. In the Wetterau, that peasant girl 
is considered the handsomest who wears the most petti- 
coats. To go to field-labor in seven petticoats can be 
anything but convenient or agreeable, but it is the tra- 
ditionally correct thing ; and a German peasant girl 
would think herself as unfavorably conspicuous in an 
untraditional costume as an English servant girl would 
now think herself in a "linsey-woolsey" apron or a 
thick muslin cap. In many districts no medical advice 
would induce the rustic to renounce the tight leather 
belt with which he injures his digestive functions ; you 
could more easily persuade him to smile on a new com- 
munal system than on the unhistorical invention of 
braces. In the eighteenth century, in spite of the phil- 
atithropic preachers of potatoes, the peasant for years 
threw his potatoes to the pigs and the dogs, before he 
could be persuaded to put them on his own table. 
However, the unwillingness of the peasant to adopt in- 



RIEHL. 193 

Dovations has a not unreasonable foundation in the fact 
that for him experiments are practical, not theoretical, 
and must be made with expense of money instead of 
brains — a fact that is not, perhaps, sufficiently taken 
into account by agricultural theorists, who complain of 
the farmer's obstinacy. The peasant has the smallest 
possible faith in theoretic knowledge ; he thinks it rath- 
er dangerous than otherwise, as is well indicated by a 
Lower Rhenish proverb : *' One is never too old to 
learn, said an old woman ; so she learned to be a witch." 

Between many villages an historical feud — once, per- 
haps, the occasion of much bloodshed — is still kept up 
under the milder form of an occasional round of cud- 
gelling, and the launching of traditional nicknames. 
An historical feud of this kind still exists, for example, 
among many villages on the Rhine and more inland 
places in the neighborhood. Rheinschnacke (of which 
the equivalent is, perhaps, "water-snake") is the stand- 
ing term of ignominy for the inhabitant of the Rhine 
village, who repays it in kind by the epithet ^'''karsV 
(mattock) or " kiikuh " (cuckoo), according as the ob- 
ject of his hereditary hatred belongs to the field or the 
forest. If any Romeo among the " mattocks " were to 
marry a Juliet among the " water-snakes," there would 
be no lack of Tybalts and Mercutios to carry the con- 
flict from words to blows, though neither side knows a 
reason for the enmity. 

A droll instance of peasant conservatism is told of a 
village on the Taunus, whose inhabitants from time im- 
memorial had been famous for impromptu cudgelling. 
For this historical offence the magistrates of the district 

had always inflicted the equally historical punishment 

9 



194 NATURAL HISTOKY OF GEliMAN LIFE". 

of shutting up the most incorrigible offenders, not in 
prison, but in their own pig-sty. In recent times, how- 
ever, the government, wishing to correct the rudeness 
of these peasants, appointed an " enlightened " man as 
magistrate, who at once abolished the original penalty 
above mentioned. But this relaxation of punishment 
was so far from being welcome to the villagers that 
they presented a petition praying that a more energetic 
man might be given them as a magistrate, who would 
have the courage to punish according to law and jus- 
tice, "as had been beforetime." And the magistrate 
who abolished incarceration in the pig-sty could never 
obtain the respect of the neighborhood. This hap- 
pened no longer ago than the beginning of the present 
century. 

But it must not be supposed that the historical piety 
of the German peasant extends to anything not imme- 
diately connected with himself. He has the warmest 
piety towards the old tumble-down house which his 
grandfather built, and which nothing will induce him 
to improve ; but towards the venerable ruins of the 
old castle that overlooks his village he has no piety at all, 
and carries off its stones to make a fence for his garden, 
or tears down the Gothic carving of the old monastic 
church, which is " nothing to him," to mark off a foot- 
path through his field. It is the same with historical 
traditions. The peasant has them fresh in his memory, 
so far as they relate to himself. In districts where the 
peasantry are unadulterated, you discern the remnants 
of the feudal relations in innumerable customs and 
phrases, but you will ask in vain for historical tra- 
ditions concerning the empire, or even concerning the 



RIEHL. 195 

particular princely house to which the peasant is subject 
He can tell you what " half people and whole people " 
mean ; in Hesse you will still hear of "four horses mak- 
ing a whole peasant," or of " four-day and three-day 
peasants :" but you will ask in vain about Charlemagne 
and Frederic Barbarossa. 

Riehl well observes that the feudal system, which 
made the peasant the bondman of his lord, was an im- 
mense benefit in a country the greater part of which 
had still to be colonized — rescued the peasant from vag- 
abondage, and laid the foundation of persistency and 
endurance in future generations. H a free German 
peasantry belongs only to modern times, it is to his an- 
cestor, who was a serf, and even, in the earliest times, a 
slave, that the peasant owes the foundation of his inde- 
pendence ; namely, his capability of a settled existence 
— nay, his unreasoning persistency, which has its impor- 
tant function in the development of the race. 

Perhaps the very worst result of that unreasoning 
persistency is the peasant's inveterate habit of litigation. 
Every one remembers the immortal description of Dan- 
die Dinmont's importunate application to Lawyer Pley- 
dell to manage his " bit lawsuit," till at length Pleydell 
consents to help him ruin himself, on the ground that 
Dandie may fall into worse hands. It seems this is a 
scene which has many parallels in Germany. The 
farmer's lawsuit is his point of honor ; and he will car- 
ry it through, though he knows from the very first day 
that he shall get nothing by it. The litigious peasant 
piques himself, like Mr. Saddletree, on his knowledge 
of the law, and this vanity is the chief impulse to many 
a lawsuit. To the mind of the peasant, law presents 



196 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE '. 

itself as the " custom of the country," and it is his pride 
to be versed in all customs. Custom with him holds 
the place of sentiment^ of theory, and, in many cases, of 
affection. Kiehl justly urges the importance of simpli- 
fying law proceedings, so as to cut off this vanity at 
its source, and also of encouraging, by every possible 
means, the practice of arbitration. 

The peasant never begins his lawsuit in summer, for 
the same reason that he does not make love and marry 
in summer — because he has no time for that sort of 
thing. x\ny thing is easier to him than to move out of 
his habitual course, and he is attached even to his pri- 
vations. Some years ago, a peasant youth, out of the 
poorest and remotest region of the Westerwald, was en- 
listed as a recruit, at Wielburg in IS"assau. The lad 
having never in his life slept in a bed, w4ien he had to 
get into one for the first time began to cry like a child ; 
and he deserted twice because he could not reconcile 
himself to sleeping in a bed, and to the " fine " life of 
the barracks ; he was homesick at the thought of his 
accustomed poverty and his thatched hut. A strong 
contrast this with the feeling of the poor in towns, who 
would be far enouo:h from desertinoj because their con- 
dition was too much improved ! The genuine peasant 
is never ashamed of his rank and calling ; he is rather 
inclined to look down on every one who does not wear 
a smock-frock, and thinks a man who has the manners 
of the gentry is likely to be rather windy and unsub- 
stantial. In some places, even in French districts, this 
feeling is strongly symbolized by the practice of the 
peasantry, on certain festival days, to dress the images 
of the saints in peasant's clothing. History tells us of 



RIEHL. 197 

all kinds of peasant insurrections, the object of which 
was to obtain relief for the peasants from some of their 
many oppressions ; but of an effort on their part to 
step out of their hereditary rank and calling, to become 
gentry, to leave the plough and carry on the easier bus- 
iness of capitalists or government functionaries, there is 
no example. 

The German novelists who undertake to give pictures 
of peasant life fall into the same mistake as our Eng- 
lish novelists; they transfer their own feelings to 
ploughmen and woodcutters, and give them both joys 
and sorrows of which they know nothing. The peasant 
never questions the obligations of family ties — he ques- 
tions no custom — but tender affection, as it exists among 
the refined part of mankind, is almost as foreign to him 
as white hands and filbert-shaped nails. That the aged 
father who has given up his property to his children on 
condition of their maintaining him for the remainder 
of his life is very far from meeting with delicate atten- 
tions, is indicated by the proverb current among the 
peasantry — " Don't take your clothes off before you go 
to bed." * Among rustic moral tales and parables, not 
one is more universal than the story of the ungrateful 
children, who made their gray-headed father, dependent 
on them for a maintenance, eat at a wooden trough be- 
cause he shook the food out of his trembling hands. 
Then these same ungrateful children observed one day 
that their own little boy was making a tiny wooden 
trough ; and when they asked him what it was for, he 
answered, that his father and mother might eat out of 
it when he was a man and had to keep tliem. 

* This proverb is common amoug the English farmers also. 



198 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 

Marriage is a very prudential affair, especially among 
the peasants who have the largest share of property. 
Politic marriages are as common among them as among 
princes; and when a peasant-heiress in Westplialia mar- 
ries, her husband adopts her name, and places his own 
after it with the prefix gehorner {7ie). The girls marry 
young, and the rapidity with which they get old and 
ngly is one among the many proofs that the early years 
of marriage are fuller of hardships than of conjugal 
tenderness. " When our writers of village stories," says 
Kiehl, " transferred their own emotional life to the peas- 
ant, tliey obliterated what is precisely his most pre- 
dominant characteristic ; namely, that with him general 
custom holds the place of individual feeling." 

We pay for greater emotional susceptibility too often 
by nervous diseases of which the peasant knows noth- 
ing. To him headache is the least of physical evils, 
because he thinks head-work the easiest and least indis- 
pensable of all labor. Happily, many of the younger 
sons in peasant families, by going to seek their living 
in the towns, carry their hardy nervous system to amal- 
gamate with the over-wrought nerves of our town pop- 
ulation, and refresh them with a little rude vigor. And 
a return to the habits of peasant life is the best remedy 
for many moral as well as physical diseases induced by 
perverted civilization. Kiehl points to colonization as 
presenting the true field for this regenerative process. 
On the other side of the ocean a man will have the cour- 
age to begin life again as a peasant, while at home, per- 
haps, opportunity as well as courage will fail him. 
A propos of this subject of emigration, he remarks the 
striking fact that the native shrewdness and mother-wit 



RIEHL. 199 

of the German peasant seem to forsake him entirely 
when he has to apply them under new circumstances, 
and on relations foreign to his experience. Hence it is 
that the German peasant who emigrates so constantly 
falls a victim to unprincipled adventurers in the pre- 
liminaries to emigration ; but if once he gets his foot 
on the American soil, he exhibits all the first-rate quali- 
ties of an agricultural colonist ; and among all German 
emigrants the peasant class are the most successful. 

But many disintegrating forces have been at work on 
the peasant character, and degeneration is unhappily go- 
ing on at a greater pace than development. In the wine 
districts, especially, the inability of the small proprietors 
to bear up under the vicissitudes of the market, or to 
insure a high quality of wine by running the risks of a 
late vintage, and the competition of beer and cider with 
the inferior wines, have tended to produce that uncer- 
tainty of gain which, with the peasant, is the inevitable 
cause of demoralization. The small peasant proprietors 
are not a new class in Germany, but many of the evils 
of their position are new. They are more dependent 
on ready money than formerly ; thus, where a peasant 
used to get his wood for building and firing from the 
common forest, he has now to pay for it with hai;d 
cash ; he used to thatch his own house, with the help, 
perhaps, of a neighbor, but now he pays a man to do it 
for him ; he used to pay taxes in kind, he now pays them 
in money. The chances of the market have to be dis- 
counted, and the peasant falls into the hands of money- 
lenders. Here is one of the cases in which social policy 
clashes with a purely economical policy. 

Political vicissitudes have added their influence to 



200 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMA.N LIFE: 

that of economical changes in disturbing that dim in- 
stinct, that reverence for traditional custom, which is the 
peasant's principle of action. He is in the midst of 
novelties for which he knows no reason — changes in 
political geography, changes of the government to which 
he owes fealty, changes in bureaucratic management and 
police regulations. He finds himself in a new element 
before an apparatus for breathing in it is developed in 
him. His only knowledge of modern history is in some 
of its results — for instance, that he has to pay heavier 
taxes from year to year. His chief idea of a govern- 
ment is of a power that raises his taxes, opposes his 
harmless customs, and torments him with new formali- 
ties. The source of all this is the false system of " en- 
lightening" the peasant, which has been adopted by the 
bureaucratic governments. A system which disregards 
the traditions and hereditary attachments of the peasant, 
and appeals only to a logical understanding which is not 
yet developed in him, is simply disintegrating and ruin- 
ous to the peasant character. The interference with the 
communal regulations has been of this fatal character. 
Instead of endeavoring to promote to the utmost the 
healthy life of the commune, as an organism the conditions 
of which are bound up with the historical characteristics 
of the peasant, the bureaucratic plan of government is 
bent on improvement by its patent machinery of state- 
appointed functionaries, and off-hand regulations in ac- 
cordance with modern enlightenment. The spirit of com- 
munal exclusiveness — the resistance to the indiscriminate 
establisliment of strangers — is an intense traditional 
feeling in the peasant. "This gallows is for us and our 
children," is the typical motto of this spirit. But such 



BIEHL* 201 

^delusiveness is highly irrational and repugnant to 
liberalism ; therefore a bureaucratic government at once 
opposes it, and encourages to the utmost the introduc- 
tion of new inhabitants in the provincial communes. 
Instead of allowing the peasants to manage their own 
affairs, and, if they happen to believe that five and four 
make eleven, to unlearn the prejudice by their own ex- 
perience in calculation, so that they may gradually un- 
derstand processes, and not merel}^ see results, bureau- 
cracy comes with its "Ready Reckoner" and works all 
thef peasant's sums for him — the surest way of maintain- 
ing him in his stupidity, however it may shake his 
prejudice. 

Another questionable plan for elevating the peasant 
is the supposed elevation of the clerical character, by 
Dreventing the clergyman from cultivating more than a 
trifling part of the land attached to his benefice — that 
he may be as much as possible of a scientific theologian, 
and as little as possible of a peasant. In this, Riehl ob- 
serves, lies one great source of weakness to the Protes- 
tant Church as compared with the Catholic, which finds 
the great majority of its priests among the lower orders; 
and we have had the opportunity of making an analo- 
gous comparison in England, where many of us can re- 
member country districts in which the great mass of the 
people were Christianized by illiterate Methodist and 
Independent ministers ; while the influence of the parish 
clergyman among the poor did not extend much beyond 
a few old w^omen in scarlet cloaks, and a few^ exceptional 
church-going laborers. 

Bearing in mind the general characteristics of the 

German peasant, it is easy to understand his relation to 
11 9* 



202 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 

the revolutionary ideas and revolntionarj movements 
of modern times. Tlie peasant in Germany, as else- 
where, is a born grumbler. He has always plenty of 
grievances in his pocket, but he does not generalize 
those grievances; he does not complain of "govern- 
ment" or "society," probably because he has good rea- 
son to complain of the burgomaster. When a few sparks 
from the first Frencli Revolution fell among the German 
peasantry, and in certain villages of Saxony the country 
people assembled together to write down their demands, 
there was no glimpse in their petition of the " univer- 
sal rights of man," but simply of their own particular 
affairs as Saxon peasants. Again, after the July revolu- 
tion of 1830, there were many insignificant peasant in- 
surrections ; but the object of almost all was the removal 
of local grievances. Toll-houses were pulled down ; 
stamped paper was destroyed ; in some places there was 
a persecution of wild boars, in others of that plentiful 
tame animal, the German Rath, or councillor who is 
never called into council. But in 1848 it seemed as if 
the movements of the peasants had taken a new char- 
acter ; in the small western states of Germany it seemed 
as if the whole class of peasantry was in insurrection. 
But, in fact, the peasant did not know the meaning of 
the part he was playing. He had heard that everything 
was being set right in the towns, and that wonderful 
things were happening there, so he tied up his bundle 
and set off. Without any distinct object or resolution, 
the 3ountry people presented themselves on the scene of 
commotion, and were warmly received by the party 
leaders. But, seen from the windows of ducal palaces 
and ministerial hotels, these swarms of peasants had 



EIEHL. 203 

^juite another aspect, and it was imagined that they had 
a common plan of co-operation. This, however, the 
peasants have never had. Systematic co-operation im- 
plies general conceptions, and a provisional subordina- 
tion of egoism, to which even the artisans of towns ha^'e 
rarely shown themselves equal, and which are as foreign 
to the mind of the peasant as logarithms or the doctrine 
of chemical proportions. And the revolutionary fervor 
of the peasant was soon cooled. The old mistrust of 
the towns was reawakened on the spot. The Tyrolese 
peasants saw no great good in the freedom of the press 
and the constitution, because these changes " seemed to 
please the gentry so much." Peasants who had given 
their voices stormily for a German parliament asked 
afterwards, with a doubtful look, whether it were to con- 
sist of infantry or cavalry. When roj^al domains were 
declared the property of the state, the peasants in some 
small principalities rejoiced over this, because they in- 
terpreted it to mean that every one would have his 
share in them, after the manner of the old common and 
forest rights. 

The very practical views of the peasants, with regard 
to the demands of the people, were in amusing contrast 
with the abstract theorizing of the educated townsmen. 
The peasant continually withheld all state payments un- 
til he saw how matters would turn out, and was dis- 
posed to reckon up the solid benefit, in the form of land 
or money, that might come to him from the changes 
obtained. While the townsman was heating his brains 
about representation on the broadest basis, the peasant 
asked if the relation between tenant and landlord would 
continue as before, and whether the removal of the 



204 NATURAL HISTOKY OF GERMAN LIFE : 

"feudal obligations" meant that the farmer should be- 
come owner of the land « 

It is in the same naive way tliat Communism is in- 
terpreted by the German peasantry. The wide spread 
among them of communistic doctrines, the eagerness 
with which they listened to a plan for the partition of 
property, seemed to countenance the notion that it was 
a delusion to suppose the peasant would be secured 
from this intoxication by his love of secure possession 
and peaceful earnings. But, in fact, ^,he peasant contem- 
plated " partition " by the light of an historical reminis- 
cence rather than of novel theory. Ths golden age, in 
the imagination of the peasant, was the time when every 
member of the commune had a right to as much wood 
from the forest as would enable him to sell some, after 
using what he wanted in firing, in which the communal 
possessions were so profitable that, instead of his having 
to pay rates at the end of the year, each member of the 
commune was something in pocket. Hence, the peas- 
ants in general understood by '* partition " that the 
state lands, especially the forests, would be divided 
among the communes, and that, by some political leger- 
demain or other, everybody would have free firewood, 
free grazing for his cattle, and, over and above that, a 
piece of gold without working for it. That he should 
give up a single clod of his own to further the general 
'' partition " had never entered the mind of the peasant 
communist : and the perception that this was an essen- 
tial preliminary to " partition " was often a sufficient 
cure for his Communism. 

In villages lying in the neighborhood of large towns, 
however, where the circumstances of the peasantry are 



EIEHL. 205 

very different, quite another interpretation of Commu- 
nism is prevalent. Here the peasant is generally sunk to 
the position of the proletaire, living from hand to mouth : 
he has nothing to lose, but everything to gain by " par- 
tition." The coarse nature of the peasant has here 
been corrupted into bestiality by the disturbance of his 
instincts, while he is as yet incapable of principles ; 
and in this type of the degenerate peasant is seen the 
worst example of ignorance intoxicated by theory. 

A significant hint as to the interpretation the peas- 
ants put on revolutionary theories may be drawn from 
the way they employed the few weeks in which their 
movements were unchecked. They felled the forest 
trees and shot the game ; they withheld taxes ; they 
shook off the imaginary or real burdens imposed on 
them by their mediatized princes, by presenting their 
"demands" in a very rough way before the ducal or 
princely " Schloss ;" they set their faces against the 
bureaucratic management of the communes, deposed 
the government functionaries who had been placed 
over them as burgomasters and magistrates, and abol- 
ished the whole bureaucratic system of procedure, sim- 
ply by taking no notice of its regulations, and recurring 
to some tradition — some old order or disorder of things. 
In all this it is clear that they were animated not in 
the least by the spirit of modern revolution, but by a 
purely narrow and personal impulse towards reaction. 

The idea of constitutional government lies quite be- 
yond the range of the German peasant's conceptions. 
His only notion of representation is that of a represen- 
tation of ranks — of classes; his only notion of a deputy 
is of one who takes care, not of the national welfare, but 



20G NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE *. 

of the interests of his own order. Herein lay the great 
mistake of the democratic party, in couimou with the 
bureaucratic governments, that they entirely omitted 
the peculiar character of the peasant from their politi- 
cal calculations. They talked of the " people," and for- 
got that the peasants were included in the term. Only 
a baseless misconception of the peasant's character could 
induce the supposition that he would feel the slightest 
enthusiasm about the principles involved in the recon- 
stitution of the Empire, or even about that reconstitu- 
tion itself. He has no zeal for a written law, as such, 
but only so far as it takes the form of living law — a 
tradition. It w^as the external authority which the 
revolutionary party had won in Baden that attracted 
the peasants into a participation in the struggle. 

Such, Riehl tells us, are the general characteristics of 
the German peasantry — characteristics which subsist 
amid a wide variety of circumstances. In Mecklen- 
burg, Pomerania, and Brandenburg, the peasant lives on 
extensive estates ; in Westphalia he lives in large iso- 
lated homesteads ; in the Westerwald and in Sauer- 
land, in little groups of villages and hamlets ; on the 
Rhine, land is for the most part parcelled out among 
small proprietors, who live together in large villages. 
Then, of course, the diversified physical geography of 
Germany gives rise to equally diversified methods of 
land-culture ; and out of tliese various circumstances 
grow numerous specific differences in manner and 
character. But the generic character of the German 
peasant is everywhere the same : in the clean mountain- 
hamlet and in the dirty fishing-village on the coast; in 
the plains of North Germany and in the backwoods of 



RIEHL. 207 

America. "Everywhere he has the same historicai 
character — everywhere custom is his supreme law. 
Where reh'gion and patriotism are still a na'ive instinct 
— are still a sacred custom — there begins the class of 
the German Peasantry." 

Our readers will perhaps already have gathered from 
the foregoing portrait of the German peasant that 
Kiehl is not a man who looks at objects through the 
spectacles either of the doctrinaire or the dreamer ; and 
they will be ready to believe what he tells us in his 
Preface — namely, that years ago he began his wander- 
ings over the hills and plains of Germany for the sake 
of obtaining, in immediate intercourse with the people, 
that completion of his historical, political, and economi- 
cal studies which he was unable to find in books. He 
began his investigations with no party prepossessions, 
and his present views were evolved entirely from his 
own gradually amassed observations. He was, first of 
all, a pedestrian, and only in the second place a political 
author. The views at which he has arrived by this in- 
ductive process, he sums up in the term — social-jjoliti- 
cal-conservatism ; but his conservatism is, we conceive, 
of a thoroughly philosophical kind. He sees in Euro- 
pean society incarnate history^ and any attempt to dis- 
engage it from its historical elements must, he believes, 
be simply destructive of social vitality.* What has 
grown up historically can only die out historically, by 



* Throughout this article, in our statement of Eiehl's oi^inions, 
we must be understood not as quoting Riehl, but as interpreting 
and illustratinar him. 



208 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 

the gradual operation of necessary laws. The external 
conditions which society has inherited from the past are 
but the manifestation of inherited conditions in the hu- 
man beings who compose it ; the internal conditions 
and the external are related to each other as the organ- 
ism and its medium, and development can take place 
only by tlie gradual consentaneous development of both. 
Take the familiar example of attempts to abolish titles, 
which liave been about as effective as the process of 
cutting off poppy-heads in a corn-field. ^^ Jedem Men- 
8Ghen^^ says Riehl, " ist sein Zopf angeboren^ warum soil 
denn der sociale Sprachgehrauch nicht audi seinen Zopf 
habe7if — wliich we may render, "As long as snob- 
bism runs in the blood, why should it not run in our 
speech?" As a necessary preliminary to a purely 
rational society, you must obtain purely rational men, 
free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of hereditary 
affection and antipathy ; which is as easy as to get run- 
ning streams witliout springs, or the leafy shade of the 
forest without the secular growth of trunk and branch. 
The historical conditions of society may be compared 
with those of language. It must be admitted that the 
language of cultivated nations is in anything but a 
rational state; the great sections of the civilized world 
are only approximatively intelligible to each other, and 
even that only at the cost of long study ; one word 
stands for many things, and many words for one thing; 
the subtile shades of meaning, and still subtiler echoes of 
association, make language an instrument which scarcely 
anything short of genius can wield with definiteness 
and certainty. Suppose, then, that the effort which 
has been again and again made to construct a universal 



EIEHL. 209 

language on a rational basis has at length succeeded, 
and that you have a language which has no uncertainty, 
no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shim- 
mer of manj-hned significance, no hoary archaisms 
" familiar with forgotten years" — a patent deodorized 
and non-resonant language, which effects the purpose 
of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic 
signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of 
expression to science, but will never express life^ which 
is a great deal more than science. With the anomalies 
and* inconveniences of historical language, you will have 
parted with its music and its passion, with its vital 
qualities as an expression of individual character, with 
its subtle capabilities of wit, with everything that gives 
it power over the imagination ; and the next step in 
simplification will be the invention of a talking watch, 
which will achieve the utmost facility and despatch in 
the communication of ideas by a graduated adjustment 
of ticks, to be represented in writing by a correspond- 
ing arrangement of dots. A melancholy " language of 
the future !" The sensory and motor nerves that run 
in the same sheath are scarcely bound together by a 
more necessary and delicate union than that which 
binds men's affections, imagination, wit, and humor, 
with the subtile ramifications of historical language. 
Language must be left to grow in precision, complete- 
ness, and unity, as minds grow in clearness, comprehen- 
siveness, and sympathy. And there is an analogous re- 
lation between the moral tendencies of men and the 
social conditions they have inherited. The nature of 
European men has its roots intertwined with the past, 

and can only be developed by allowing those roots to 
11* 



210 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 

remain undisturbed while the process of development 
is going on, until that perfect ripeness of the seed 
which carries with it a life independent of the root. 
This vital connection with the past is much more 
vividly felt on the Continent than in England, where 
we have to recall it by an effort of memory and reflec- 
tion ; for though our English life is in its core intensely 
traditional. Protestantism and commerce have modern- 
ized the face of the land and the aspects of society in a 
far greater degree than in any Continental country : 

"Abroad," says Ruskin, "a building of the eighth or tenth cen- 
tury stands ruinous in the open street ; the children play around 
it, the peasants heap their corn in it, the buildings of yesterday 
nestle about it, and fit their new stones in its rents, and tremble in 
sympathy as it trembles. No one wonders at it, or thinks of it as 
separate, and of another time ; we feel the ancient world to be a 
real thing, and one with the new ; antiquity is no dream ; it is 
rather the children playing about the old stones that are the dream. 
But all is continuous, and the words, ' from generation to genera- 
tion,' understandable here." 

This conception of European society as incarnate his- 
tory is the fundamental idea of Riehl's books. 

After the notable failure of revolutionary attempts 
conducted from the point of view of abstract democratic 
and socialistic theories, after the practical demonstration 
of the evils resulting from a bureaucratic system which 
governs by an undiscriminating, dead mechanism, Riehl 
wishes to urge on the consideration of his countrymen 
a social policy founded on the special study of the peo- 
ple as they are — on the natural history of the various 
social ranks. He thinks it wise to pause a little from 
theorizing, and see what is the material actually present 
for theory to work upon. It is the glory of the Social- 



EIEHL. 211 

ists — in contrast with the democratic doctrinaires^ who 
have been too much occupied with the general idea of 
" the people " to inquire particularly into the actual life 
of the people — that they have thrown themselves with 
enthusiastic zeal into the study at least of one social 
group — namely, the factory operatives ; and here lies 
the secret of their partial success. But, unfortunately, 
they have made this special study of a single fragment 
of society the basis of a theory which quietly substitutes 
for the small group of Parisian proletaires or English 
facfory-workers, the society of all Europe — nay, of the 
whole world. And in this way they have lost the best 
fruit of their investigations. For, says E,iehl, the more 
deeply we penetrate into the knowledge of society in 
its details, the more thoroughly we shall be convinced 
that a universal social jpolicy has no validity excejpt on 
paper, and can never be carried into successful practice. 
Tlie conditions of German society are altogether differ- 
ent from those of French, of English, or of Italian so- 
ciety ; and to apply the same social theory to these na- 
tions indiscriminately, is about as wise a procedure as 
Triptolemus Yellowley's application of the agricultural 
directions in Yirgil's " Georgics " to his farm in the 
Shetland Isles. 

It is the clear and strong light in which Riehl places 
this important position that in our opinion constitutes 
the suggestive value of his books for foreign as well as 
German readers. It has not been sufficiently insisted 
on, that in the various branches of Social Science there 
is an advance from the general to the special, from the 
simple to the complex, analogous with that which is 
found in the series of the sciences, from Mathematics to 



212 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE: 

Biology. To the laws of quantity comprised in Mathe- 
matics and Physics are superadded, in Chemistry, laws 
of quality ; to these again are added, in Biology, laws 
of life ; and, lastly, the conditions of life in general 
branch out into its special conditions, or Natural His- 
tory, on the one hand, and into its abnormal conditions, 
or Pathology, on the other. And in this series or rami- 
fication of the sciences, the more general science will 
not suffice to solve the problems of the more special. 
Chemistry embraces phenomena which are not explica- 
ble by Physics ; Biology embraces phenomena which 
are not explicable by Chemistry ; and no biological gen- 
eralization will enable us to predict the infinite special- 
ties produced by the complexity of vital conditions. So 
Social Science, while it has departments which in their 
fundamental generality correspond to mathematics and 
physics — namely, those grand and simple generalizations 
which trace out the inevitable mai-ch of the human race 
as a whole, and, as a ramification of these, the laws of 
economical science — has also, in the departments of gov- 
ernment and jurisprudence, which embrace the condi- 
tions of social life in all their complexity, what may be 
called its Biology, carrying us on to innumerable special 
phenomena which outlie the sphere of science, and be- 
long to Natural History. And just as the most thor- 
ough acquaintance with physics, or chemistry, or general 
physiology will not enable you at once to establish the 
balal^ce of life in your private vivarium, so that your 
particular society of zoophytes, molluscs, and echino- 
derms may feel themselves, as the Germans say, at ease 
in their skin ; so the most complete equipment of theory 
will not enable a statesman or a political and social re- 



RIEHL. 213 

former to adjust his measures wisel}^, in the absence of 
a special acquaintance with the section of society for 
which he legislates, with the peculiar characteristics of 
the nation, the province, the class whose well-being he 
has to consult. In other words, a wise social policy 
must be based not simply on abstract social science, but 
on the natural history of social bodies. 

Riehl's books are not dedicated merely to the argu- 
mentative maintenance of this or of any other position; 
they are intended chiefly as a contribution to that knowl- 
edge of the German people on the importance of which 
he insists. He is less occupied with urging his own 
conclusions than wnth impressing on his readers the 
facts which have led him to those conclusions. In the 
volume entitled "Land und Leute," which, though pub- 
lislied last, is properly an introduction to the volume 
entitled " Die Biirgerliche Gesellschaft," he considers 
the German people in their physical-geographical rela- 
tions ; he compares the natural divisions of the race, as 
determined by land and climate, and social traditions, 
with the artificial divisions which are based on diplo' 
macy ; and he traces the genesis and influences of what 
we may call the ecclesiastical geography of German}^ — • 
its partition between Catholicism and Protestantism. 
He shows that the ordinary antithesis of North and 
South Germany represents no real ethnographical dis- 
tinction, and that the natural divisions of Germany, 
founded on its physical geographj^ are threefold ; name- 
ly, the low plains, the middle mountain region, and the 
high mountain region, or Lower, Middle, and Upper 
Germany ; and on tliis primary natural division all the 
other broad ethnographical distinctions of Germany will 



214: NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : 

be found to rest. The plains of North or Lower Ger 
many include all the seaboard the nation possesses ; and 
this, together with the fact that they are traversed to the 
depth of six hundred miles by navigable rivers, makes 
them the natural seat of a trading race. Quite differ- 
ent is the geographical character of Middle Germany. 
While the northern plains are marked off into great di- 
visions, by such rivers as the Lower Rhine, the Weser, 
and the Oder, running almost in parallel lines, this cen- 
tral region is cut up like a mosaic by the capricious lines 
of. valleys and rivers. Here is the region in which you 
find those famous roofs from which the rain-water runs 
towards two different seas, and the mountain-tops from 
which you may look into eight ol* ten German states. 
The abundance of water-power and the presence of ex- 
tensive coal-mines allow of a very diversified industrial 
development in Middle Germany. Li Upper Germany, 
or the high mountain region, we find the same sym* 
metry in the lines of the rivers as in the north ; almost 
all the great Alpine streams flow parallel with the Dan- 
ube. But the majority of these rivers are neither navi- 
gable nor available for industrial objects, and instead of 
serving for communication, they shut off one great tract 
from another. The slow development, the simple peas- 
ant-life of many districts, is here determined by the 
mountain and the river. In the southeast, however, in- 
dustrial activity spreads through Bohemia towards Aus- 
tria, and forms a sort of balance to the industrial dis- 
tricts of the Lower Rhine. Of course, the boundaries 
of these three regions cannot be very strictly defined ,' 
but an approximation to the limits of Middle Germany 
may be obtained by regarding it as a triangle, of which 



RIEHL. 215 

one angle lies in Silesia, another in Aix-la-Cliapelle, and 
a third at Lake Constance. 

This triple division corresponds with the broad dis- 
tinctions of climate. In the northern plains the atmos- 
phere is damp and heavy ; in the southern mountain 
region it is dry and rare, and there are abrupt changes 
of temperature, sharp contrasts between the seasons, and 
devastating storms ; but in both these zones men are 
hardened by conflict with the roughnesses of the climate. 
In Middle. Germany, on the contrary, there is little of 
this struggle ; the seasons are more equable, and the 
mild, soft air of the valleys tends to make the inhabit- 
ants luxurious and sensitive to hardships. It is only in 
exceptional mountain districts that one is here reminded 
of the rough, bracing air on the heights of Soutliern 
Germany. It is a curious fact that, as the air becomes 
gradually lighter and rarer from the North German 
coast towards Upper Germany, the average of suicides 
regularly decreases. Mecklenburg has the highest num- 
ber, then Prussia, while the fewest suicides occur in 
Bavaria and Austria. 

Both the nortliern and southern regions have still a 
large extent of waste lands, downs, morasses, and heaths ; 
and to these are added, in the south, abundance of snow- 
fields and naked rock ; while in Middle Germany cult- 
ure has almost overspread the face of the land, and there 
are no large tracts of waste. There is the same propor- 
tion in the distribution of forests. Again, in the north 
we see a monotonous continuity of wheat-fields, potato- 
grounds, meadow-lands, and vast heaths ; and there is 
the same uniformity of culture over large surfaces in 
the southern table-lands and the Alpine pastures. In 



216 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE! 

Middle Germany, on the contrary, there is a perpetual 
variety of crops within a short space ; the diversity of 
land surface and the corresponding variety in tlie spe- 
cies of plants are an invitation to the splitting-np of 
estates, and this again encourages to tlie utmost the 
motley character of the cultivation. 

According to this threefold division, it appears that 
there are certain features common to North and South 
Germany in which they differ from Central Germany, 
and the nature of this difference Kiehl indicates by dis- 
tinguishing the former as Centralized Land and the 
latter as Individualized Land — a distinction which is 
well symbolized by the fact that North and South Ger- 
many possess the great lines of railway which are the 
medium for the traffic of the world, while Middle Ger- 
many is far richer in lines for local communication, 
and possesses the greatest length of railway within the 
smallest space. Disregarding superficialities, the East 
Frieslanders, the Schleswig- Holsteiners, the Mecklen- 
burgers, and the Pomeranians are much more nearly al- 
lied to the old Bavarians, the Tyrolese, and the Styrians, 
than any of these are allied to the Saxons, the Thurin- 
gians, or the Rhinelanders. Both in North and South 
Germany original races are still found in large masses, 
and popular dialects are spoken ; you still find tliere 
thoroughly peasant districts, thorough villages, and also, 
at great intervals, thorough cities; you still find there 
a sense of rank. In Middle Germany, on the contrary, 
the original races are fused together or sprinkled hither 
and thither ; the peculiarities of the popular dialects are 
worn down or confused ; there is no very strict line of 
demarcation between the country and the town popula- 



EIEHL. 217 

tion, hundreds of small towns and large villages being 
hardly distinguishable in their characteristics ; and the 
sense of rank, as part of the organic structure of society, 
is ahnost extinguished. Again, both in the north and 
south there is still a strong ecclesiastical spirit in the peo- 
ple, and the Pomeranian sees Antichrist in the Pope as 
clearly as the Tyrolesc sees him in Doctor Luther ; while 
in Middle Germany the confessions are mingled — they 
exist peaceably side by side in very narrow space, and 
tolerance or indifference has spread itself widely even 
in the popular mind. And the analogy, or rather the 
causal relation, between the physical geography of the 
three regions and the development of the population 
goes still further: 

" For," observes Rielil, " the striking connection which has been 
pointed ont between the local geological formations in Germany 
and the revolutionary disposition of the people, has more than a 
metaphorical significance. Where the primeval physical revolu- 
tions of the globe have been the wildest in their eflfeets, and the 
most multiform strata have been tossed together or thrown one 
npon the other, it is a very intelligible consequence that on a land 
surface thus broken up, the population should sooner develop itself 
into small communities, and that the more intense life generated in 
these smaller communities should become the most favorable nidus 
for the reception of modern culture, and with this a susceptibility 
for its revolutionary ideas ; while a people settled in a region where 
its groups are spread over a large space will persist much more ob- 
stinately in the retention of its original character. The people of 
Middle Germany have none of that exclusive one-sidedness whicli 
determines the j)eculiar genius of great national groups, just as this 
one-sidedness or uniformity is wanting to the geological and geo- 
graphical character of their land." 

; This ethnographical outline Kiehl fills up with special 

10 



218 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE' ' 

and typical descriptions, and then makes it the starting- 
point for a criticism of the actual political condition of 
Germany. The volume is full of vivid pictures, as well 
as penetrating glances into the maladies and tendencies 
of modern society. It would be fascinating as literature, 
if it were not important for its facts and philosophy. 
But we can only commend it to our readers, and pass on 
to the volume entitled " Die Burgerliche Gesellschaft," 
from which we have drawn our sketch of the German 
peasantry. Here Biehl gives us a series of studies in 
that natural history of the people which he regards as 
the proper basis of social policy. He liolds that, in Eu- 
ropean society, there are three natural ranks or estates : 
the hereditary landed aristocracy, the citizens or com- 
mercial class, and the peasantry or agricultural class. By 
natural ranlcs he means ranks which have their roots 
deep in the historical structure of society, and are still, 
in the present, showing vitality above ground ; he means 
those great social groups which are not only distinguished 
externally by their vocation, but essentially by their 
mental character, their habits, their mode of life — by 
the principle they represent in the historical develop- 
ment of society. In his conception of the "Fourth Es- 
tate" he differs from the usual interpretation, according 
to which it is simply equivalent to the Proletariat, or 
those who are dependent on daily wages, whose only 
capital is their skill or bodily strength — factory opera- 
tives, artisans, agricultural laborers, to whom might be 
added, especially in Germany, the da3^-laborers with the 
qr.ill, the literary proletariat. This, Riehl observes, is a 
valid basis of economical classification, but not of social 
classification. In his view, the Fourth Estate is a stratum 



RIEHL. 219 

produced by the perpetual abrasion of the other great 
social groups; it is the sign and result of the decompo- 
sition which is commencing in the organic constitution 
of society. Its elements are derived alike from the 
aristocracy, the hourgeoisie, and the peasantry. It as- 
sembles under its banner the deserters of historical so- 
ciety, and forms them into a terrible army, which is only 
just awaking to the consciousness of its corporate power. 
The tendency of this Fourth Estate, by the very process 
of its formation, is to do away with the distinctive his- 
torical character of the other estates, and to resolve their 
peculiar rank and vocation into a uniform social relation 
founded on an abstract conception of society. Accord- 
ing to Riehl's classification, the day-laborers, whom the 
political economist designates as the Fourth Estate, be- 
long partly to the peasantry or agricultural class, and 
partly to the citizens or commercial class. 

Riehl considers, in the first place, the peasantry and 
aristocracy as the " Forces of social persistence," and, in 
the second, the hourgeoisie and the "fourth estate" as 
the "Forces of social movement." 

The aristocracy, he observes, is the only one among 
these four groups which is denied by others besides So- 
cialists to have any natural basis as a separate rank. It 
is admitted that there was once an aristocracy which 
had an intrinsic ground of existence ; but now, it is 
alleged, this is an historical fossil, an antiquarian relic, 
venerable because gray with age. In what, it is asked, 
can consist the peculiar vocation of the aristocracy, since 
it has no longer the monopoly of the land, of the higher 
military functions, and of government offices, and since 
the service of the court has no longer any political im- 



220 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE! 

portance? To this Riehl replies that in great revohi- 
tionarj crises, the ''men of progress" have more than 
once " abolished " the aristocracy. But, remarkably 
enough, the aristocracy has always reappeared. This 
measure of abolition showed that the nobility were no 
lonorer regarded as a real class, for to abolish a real class 
would be an absurdity. It is quite possible to contem- 
plate a voluntary breaking-up of the peasant or citizen 
class in the socialistic sense, but no man in his senses 
would think of straightway "abolishing" citizens and 
peasants. The aristocracy, then, was regarded as a sort 
of cancer, or excrescence of society. Nevertheless, not 
only has it been found impossible to annihilate an hered- 
itary nobility by decree ; but also, the aristocracy of the 
eighteenth century outlived even the self -destructive 
acts of its own perversity. A life which was entirely 
without object, entirely destitute of functions, would 
not, says E-iehl, be so persistent. He has an acute criti- 
cism of those who conduct a polemic against the idea of 
an hereditary aristocracy while they are proposing an 
"aristocracy of talent," which, after all, is based on the 
principle of inheritance. The Socialists are, therefore, 
only consistent in declaring against an aristocracy of 
talent. " But when they have turned the world into a 
great Foundling Hospital, they will still be unable to 
eradicate the ' privileges of birth.' " We must not fol- 
low him in his criticism, how^ever ; nor can we afford to 
do more than mention hastily his interesting sketch of 
the mediaeval aristocracy, and his admonition to the 
German aristocracy of the present day, that the vitality 
of their class is not to be sustained by romantic attempts 
to revive mediaeval forms and sentiments, but only by 



RIEHL. 221 

the exercise of functions as real and salutary for actual 
society as those of the mediaeval aristocracy were for the 
feudal age. "In modern society the divisions of rank 
indicate division of labor, according to that distribution 
of functions in the social organism which the historical 
constitution of society has determined. In this way the 
Drinciple of differentiation and the principle of unity 
are identical." 

The elaborate study of the German hourgeoisie which 
forms the next division of the volume must be passed 
over ; but we may pause a moment to note Riehl's defi- 
nition of the social Philister (Philistine), an epithet for 
which we have no equivalent — not at all, however, for 
want of the object it represents. Most people who read 
a little German know that the epithet Philister origi- 
nated in the Biirscheii-Leben, or student-life of Germany, 
and that the antithesis of Bursch and Philister was 
equivalent to the antithesis of " gown " and " town ;" 
but since the word has passed into ordinary language, it 
has assumed several shades of significance which have 
not yet been merged in a single absolute meaning; and 
one of the questions which an English visitor in Ger- 
many will probably take an opportunity of asking is, 
"What is the strict meaning of the word Philister f* 
Eiehl's answer is, that the Philister is one who is in- 
different to all social interests, all public life, as distin- 
guished from selfish and private interests; he has no 
sympathy with political and social events except as they 
affect his own comfort and prosperity, as they offer him 
material for amusement or opportunity for gratifying 
his vanity. He has no social or political creed, but is 
always of the opinion which is most convenient for the 



222 NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE*. 

moment. He is always in the majority, and is the main 
element of unreason and stupidity in the judgment of a 
" discerning public." It seems presumptuous in us to 
dispute Riehl's interpretation of a German word, but 
we must think that, in literature, the epithet Philister 
has usually a wider meaning than this — includes his defi- 
nition and something more. We imagine the Philister 
is the personification of the spirit which judges every- 
thing from a lower point of view than the subject de- 
mands — which judges the affairs of the parish from the 
egotistic or purely personal point of view ; which judges 
the affairs of the nation from the parochial point of 
view, and does not hesitate to measure the merits of the 
universe from the human point of view. At least, this 
must surely be the spirit to which Goethe alludes in a 
passage cited by Riehl himself, where he says that the 
Germans need not be ashamed of erecting a monument 
to him as well as to Blucher ; for if Bhicher had freed 
them from the French, he (Goethe) had freed them from 
the nets of the Philister: 

" Ihr mogt mir immer imgescheut 
Gleich Bliiclierii Denkmal setzen ! 
Von Franzosen liat er eucli befreit, 
Ich von Philister-netzen." 

Goethe could hardly claim to be the apostle of public 
spirit ; but he is eminently the man who helps us to 
rise to a lofty point of observation, so that we may see 
things in their relative proportions. 

The most interesting chapters in the description of the 
" Fourth Estate," which concludes the volume, are those 
on the " Aristocratic Proletariat " and the " Intellec- 
tual Proletariat." The Fourth Estate in Germany, says 



RIEHL. 228 

Riehl, has its centre of gravity not, as in England and 
France, in the day-laborers and factory operatives, and 
still less in the degenerate peasantry. In Germany, the 
educated j)'^oletariat is the leaven that sets the mass in 
fermentation ; the dangerous classes there go about, not 
in blouses, but in frock-coats ; they begin with the im- 
poverished prince and end in the hungriest litterateur. 
The custom that all the sons of a nobleman shall inherit 
their father's title necessarily goes on multiplying that 
class of aristocrats who are not only without function, 
but without adequate provision, and who shrink from 
entering the ranks of the citizens by adopting some 
honest calling. The younger son of a prince, says Riehl, 
is usually obliged to remain without any vocation ; and 
however zealously he may study music, painting, or sci- 
ence, he can never be a regular musician, painter, or man 
of science ; his pursuit will be called a " passion," not a 
" calling," and to the end of his days he remains a dilet- 
tante. " But the ardent pursuit of a fixed practical call- 
ing can alone satisfy the active man." Direct legisla- 
tion cannot remedy this evil. The inheritance of titles 
by younger sons is the universal custom, and custom is 
stronger than law. But if all government preference 
for the " aristocratic proletariat " were withdrawn, the 
sensible men among them would prefer emigration, or 
the pursuit of some profession, to the hungry distinc- 
tion of a title without rents. 

The intellectual proletaires Kiehl calls the ^' church 
militant " of the Fourth Estate in Germany. In no oth- 
er country are they so numerous ; in no other country 
is the trade in material and industrial capital so far ex- 
ceeded by the wholesale and retail trade, the trafiic and 



22 i NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE". 

the usury, in the intellectual capital of the nation. Ger- 
many yields more intellectual produce than it can use 
and pay for. 

" This over-production, which is not transient, but permanent, 
nay, is constantly on the increase, evidences a diseased state of the 
national industry, a perverted application of industrial powers, and 
is a far more pungent satire on the national condition than all the 
poverty of operatives and peasants. . . . Other nations need not 
envy us the preponderance of the intellectual proletariat over the 
proletaires of manual labor. For man more easily becomes diseased 
from over-study than from the labor of the hands ; and it is precisely 
in the intellectual jjro/etariai that there are the most dangerous seeds 
of disease. This is the group in which the opposition between earn- 
ings and wants, between the ideal social position and the real, is 
the most hopelessly irreconcilable." 

We must unwillingly leave our readers to make ac- 
quaintance for themselves with the graphic details with 
whicli Eiehl follows up this general statement ; but, be- 
fore quitting these admirable volumes, let us say, lest 
our inevitable omissions should have left room for a 
different conclusion, that Eiehl's conservatism is not in 
the least tinged with the partisanship of a class, with a 
poetic fanaticism for the past, or with the prejudice of 
a mind incapable of discerning the grander evohition of 
things to which all social forms are but temporarily sub- 
servient. It is the conservatism of a clear-eyed, practi- 
cal, but withal large-minded man — a little caustic, per- 
liaps, now and then in his epigrams on democratic doc- 
trinaires who have their nostrum for all political and 
social diseases, and on communistic theories which he 
regards as " the despair of the individual in his own 
manhood, reduced to a system," but nevertheless able 
and willing to do justice to the elements of fact and 



RIEHL. 225 

reason in every shade of opinion and every form of ef- 
fort. He is as far as possible from the folly of suppos- 
ing that the sun will go backward on the dial because 
we put the hands of our clock backward ; he only con- 
tends against the opposite folly of decreeing that it shall 
be mid-day, while in fact the sun is only just touching 
the mountain-tops, and all along the valley men are 

stumoling in the twilight. 

12 ^Q* 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

It was between three and four o'clock, on a fine 
morning in August, that, after a ten hours' journey 
from Frankfort, I awoke at tlie Weimar station. No 
tipsiness can be more dead to all appeals than that which 
comes from fitful draughts of sleep on a railway jour- 
ney by night. To the disgust of your wakeful compan- 
ions, you are totally insensible to the existence of your 
umbrella, and to the fact that your carpet-bag is stowed 
under your seat, or that you have borrowed books and 
tucked them behind the cushion. " What's the odds, 
so long as one can sleep ?" is your philosophic formula, 
and it is not until you have begun to shiver on the plat- 
form in the early morning air that you become alive to 
property and its duties — i. e., to the necessity of keeping 
a fast grip upon it. Such was my condition when I 
reached the station at Weim.ar. The ride to the town 
thoroughly roused me, all the more because the glimpses 
I caught from the carriage window were in startling 
contrast with my preconceptions. The lines of houses 
looked rough and straggling, and were often interrupted 
by trees peeping out from the gardens behind. At last 
we stopped before the Erbprinz, an inn of long standing, 
in the heart of the town, and were ushered along heavj^- 
looking in-and-out corridors, such as are found only 
in German inns, into rooms which overlooked a garden 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 227 

)ust like one you may see at the back of a farmlionse in 
many an English village. 

A walk in the morning in search of lodgings con- 
firmed the impression that Weimar was more like a 
market-town than the precinct of a court. " And this 
is the Atliens of the North !" we said. Materially speak- 
ing, it is more like Sparta. The blending of rustic and 
civic life, the indications of a central government in the 
midst of very primitive-looking objects, has some dis- 
tant analogy with the condition of old Lacedsemon. The 
shops are most of them such as you would see in the back 
streets of an English provincial town, and the commod- 
ities on sale are often chalked on the doorposts. A loud 
rumbling of vehicles may indeed be heard now and then ; 
but the rumbling is loud, not because the vehicles are 
many, but because the springs are few. The inhabitants 
seemed to us to have more than the usual heaviness of 
Germanity ; even their stare was slow, like that of her- 
bivorous quadrupeds. We set out with the intention of 
exploring the town, and at every other turn we came into 
a street which took us out of the town, or else into one 
that led us back to the market from which we set out. 
One's first feeling was, How could Goethe live here in this 
dull, lifeless village ? The reproaches cast on him for his 
worldliness and attachment to court splendor seemed lu- 
dicrous enough, and it was inconceivable that the state- 
ly Jupiter, in a frock-coat, so familiar to us all through 
Ranch's statuette, could have habitually walked along 
these rude streets and among these slouching mortals. 
Not a picturesque bit of building was to be seen ; there 
was no quaintness, nothing to remind one of historical 
associations, nothing but the most arid prosaism. 



223 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

This was the impression produced bj a first morn- 
ing's walk in Weimar — an impression which very im- 
perfectly represents what Weimar is, but which is worth 
recording, because it is true as a sort of back view. Our 
ideas were considerably modified when, in the evening, 
we found our way to the Belvedere chaussee, a splendid 
avenue of chestnut-trees, two miles in length, reaching 
from the town to the summer residence of Belvedere ; 
when we saw the Schloss, and discovered the labyrinth- 
ine beauties of the park ; indeed every day opened to us 
fresh charms in this quiet little valley and its environs. 
To any one who loves Nature in her gentle aspects, who 
delights in the chequered shade on a summer morning, 
and in a walk on the corn-clad upland at sunset, within 
sight of a little town nestled among the trees below, I 
say — come to Weimar. And if you are weary of English 
unrest, of that society of "eels in a jar," where each is 
trying to get his head above the other, the somewhat 
stupid well-being of the Weimarians will not be an un- 
welcome contrast, for a short time at least. If you care 
nothing about Goethe and Schiller and Herder and Wie- 
land, why, so much the worse for you — you will miss 
many interesting thoughts and associations; still, Wei- 
mar has a charm independent of these great names. 

First among all its attractions is the Park, which 
w^ould be remarkably beautiful even among English 
parks, and it has one advantage over all these — namely, 
that it is without a fence. It runs up to the houses, 
and far out into the corn-fields and meadows, as if it 
uad a "sweet wnll" of its own, like a river or a lake, 
and had not been planned and planted by human will. 
Through it fl.ows the Ilm, not a clear stream, it must 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 229 

be confessed, but, like all water, as Kovalis saje, " an 
eye to the landscape." Before we came to Weimar we 
had had dreams of boating on the Ilm, and we were 
not a little amused at the difference between this vision 
of our own and the reality. A few water-fowl are the 
only navigators of the river, and even they seem to 
confine themselves to one spot, as if they were there 
purely in the interest of the picturesque. The real ex- 
tent of the park is small, but the walks are so ingen- 
iously arranged, and the trees are so luxuriant and 
various, that it takes weeks to learn the turnings and 
windings by heart, so as no longer to have the sense of 
novelty. In the warm weather our great delight was 
the walk which follows the course of the Ilm, and is 
overarched by tall trees with patches of dark moss on 
their trunks, in rich contrast with the transparent green 
of the delicate leaves, through which the golden sun- 
light played, and chequered the walk before us. On 
one side of this walk the rocky ground rises to the 
height of twenty feet or more, and is clothed with 
mosses and rock-plants. On the other side there are, 
every now and then, openings, breaks in the continuity 
of shade, which show you a piece of meadow-land, with 
fine groups of trees; and at every such opening a seat 
is placed under the rock, where you may sit and chat 
away tlie sunny hours, or listen to those delicate sounds 
which one might fancy came from tiny bells worn on 
the garment of Silence to make us aware of her invis- 
ible presence. It is along this walk that you come 
upon a truncated column, with a serpent twined round 
it, devouring cakes, placed on the column as offerings, 
a bit of rude sculpture in stone. The inscription — 



230 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

Genio loci — enlightens the learned as to the signifi- 
cance of this symbol, but the people of Weimar, iinedi- 
fied by classical allusions, have explained the sculpture 
by a story which is an excellent example of a mod' 
ern myth. Once on a time, say they, a huge serpent 
infested the park, and evaded all attempts to extermi- 
nate him, until at last a cunning baker made some ap- 
petizing cakes which contained an effectual poison, and 
placed them in the serpent's reach, thus meriting a 
place with Hercules, Theseus, and other monster-slayers. 
Weimar, in gratitude, erected this column as a memorial 
of the baker's feat and its own deliverance. A little 
farther on is the Borkenhaus, where Carl August used 
to play the hermit for days together, and from which 
he used to telegraph to Goethe in his Gartenhaus. 
Sometimes we took our shady walk in the Stern^ the 
oldest part of the park plantations, on the opposite side 
of the river, lingering on our way to watch the crystal 
brook which hurries on, like a foolish young maiden, to 
wed itself with the muddy Ilm. The Stem (Star), a 
large circular opening among the trees, with walks 
radiating from it, has been thought of as the place 
for the projected statues of Goethe and Schiller. In 
Ranch's model for these statues the poets are draped in 
togas, Goethe, who was considerably the shorter of the 
two, resting his hand on Schiller's shoulder ; but it has 
been wisely determined to represent them in their 
" habit as they lived ;" so Rauch's design is rejected. 
Against classical idealizing in portrait sculpture, Wei- 
mar has already a sufficient warning in the colossal 
statue of Goethe, executed after Bettina's design, which 
the readers of the " Correspondence with a Child " may 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 231 

see engraved as a frontispiece to the second volunae. 
This statue is locked up in an odd structure, standing 
in the park, and looking like a compromise between a 
church and a summer-house. (Weimar does not sliine in 
its buildings !) How little real knowledge of Goethe 
must the mind have that could wish to see him repre- 
sented as a naked Apollo, with a Psyche at his knee ! 
The execution is as feeble as the sentiment is false ; the 
Apollo-Goethe is a caricature, and the Psyche is simply 
vulgar. Tlie statue was executed under Bettina's en- 
couragement, in the hope that it would be bought by 
the King of Prussia ; but a breach having taken place 
between her and her royal friend, a purchaser was 
sought in the Grand Duke of Weimar, who, after trans- 
porting it at enormous expense from Italj^, wisely shut 
it up where it is seen only by the curious. 

As autumn advanced and the sunshine became pre- 
cious, we preferred the broad walk on the higher 
grounds of the park, where the masses of trees are fine- 
ly disposed, leaving wide spaces of meadow which ex- 
tend on one side to the Belvedere allee with its avenue 
of chestnut-trees, and on the other to the little cliffs 
which I have already described as forming a wall by 
the walk along the Ilm. Exquisitely beautiful were 
the graceful forms of the plane-trees, thrown in golden 
relief on a background of dark pines. Here we used 
to turn and turn again in the autumn afternoons, at 
first bright and warm, then sombre with low-lying pur- 
ple clouds, and chill with winds that sent the leaves 
raining from the branches. The eye here welcomes, as 
p contrast, the ^\\\iQ facade of a building looking like a 
Bmall Greek temple, placed on the edge of a cliff, and 



232 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 

you at once conclude it to be a bit of pure ornament, a 
device to set off the landscape ; but you presently see 
a porter seated near the door of the basement story, 
beguiling the ennui of his sinecure by a book and a 
pipe, and you learn with surprise that this is another 
retreat for ducal dignity to unbend and philosophize 
in. Singularly ill-adapted to such a purpose it seems 
to beings not ducal. On the other side of the Ilm the 
park is bordered by the road leading to the little village 
of Ober Weimar, another sunny walk, which has the 
special attraction of taking one by Goethe's Garten- 
liaus, his first residence at Weimar. Inside, this Gar- 
ten haus is a homely sort of cottage, such as many an 
English nobleman's gardener lives in ; no furniture is 
left in it, and the family wish to sell it. Outside, its 
aspect became to us like that of a dear friend, whose 
irregular features and rusty clothes have a peculiar 
charm. It stands, with its bit of garden and orchard, 
on a pleasant slope, fronting the west ; before it the 
park stretches one of its meadowy openings to the trees 
which fringe the Ilm, and between this meadow and 
the garden hedge lies the said road to Ober Weimar. 
A grove of weeping birches sometimes tempted us to 
turn out of this road up to the fields at the top of the 
slope, on which not only the Gartenhaus, but several 
other modest villas are placed. From this little height 
one sees to advantage the plantations of the park in 
their autumnal coloring ; the town, with its steep-roofed 
church, and castle clock-tower, painted a gay green ; the 
bushy line of the Belvedere chaussee, and Belvedere it- 
self peeping on an eminence from its nest of trees. 
Here, too, was the place for seeing a lovely sunset, such 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAE. 233 

a sunset as September sometimes gives us, when the 
western horizon is like a rippled sea of gold, sending 
over the whole hemisphere golden vapors, which, as 
they near the east, are subdued to a deep rose-color. 

The Schloss is rather a stately, ducal-looking build- 
ing, forming three sides of a quadrangle. Strangers 
are admitted to see a suite of rooms called the Dichter- 
Zimraer (Poet's Rooms), dedicated to Goethe, Schiller, 
and Wieland. The idea of these rooms is really a pret- 
ty one : in each of them there is a bust of the poet who 
is its presiding genius, and the walls of the Schiller and 
Goethe rooms are covered with frescoes representing 
scenes from their works. The Wieland room is much 
smaller than the other two, and serves as an antecham- 
ber to them ; it is also decorated more sparingly, but 
the arabesques on the walls are very tastefully designed, 
and satisfy one better than the ambitious compositions 
from Goethe and Schiller. 

A more interesting place to visitors is the library, 
which occupies a large building not far from the 
Schloss. The principal Saal^ surrounded by a broad 
gallery, is ornamented with some very excellent busts 
and some very bad portraits. Of the busts, the most 
remarkable is that of Gliick, by Houdon — a striking 
specimen of the real in art. The sculptor has given 
every scar made by the small-pox ; he has left the nose 
as pug and insignificant, and the mouth as common, as 
Nature made them ; but then he has done what, doubt- 
less, Nature also did — he has spread over those coarsely 
cut features the irradiation of genius. A specimen of 
the opposite style in art is Trippel's bust of Goethe as 

the young Apollo, also fine in its way. It was taken 

12* 



234 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

when Goethe was in Italy ; and in the " Italianische 
Reise," mentioning the progress of the bust, he saj^s 
that he sees little likeness to himself, but is not discon- 
tented that he should go forth to the world as such a 
good-looking fellow — hubscher Bursch. This bust, how- 
ever, is a frank idealization ; when an artist tells us 
that the ideal of a Greek god divides his attention with 
his immediate subject, we are warned. But one gets 
rather irritated with idealization in portrait when, as in 
Dannecker's bust of Schiller, one has been misled into 
supposing that Schiller's brow was square and massive, 
while, in fact, it was receding. We say this partly on 
the evidence of his skull, a cast of which is kept in the 
library, so that we could place it in juxtaposition with 
the bust. The story of this skull is curious. When it 
was determined to disinter Schiller's remains, that they 
might repose in company with those of Carl August 
and Goethe, the question of identification was found to 
be a difficult one, for his bones were mingled with those 
of ten insignificant fellow -mortals. When, however, 
the eleven skulls were placed in juxtaposition, a large 
number of persons who had known Schiller separately 
and successively fixed upon the same skull as his, and 
their evidence was clenched by the discovery that the 
teeth of this skull corresponded to the statement of 
Schiller's servant, that his master had lost no teeth, ex- 
cept one, which he specified. Accordingly it was de- 
cided that this was Schiller's skull, and the comparative 
anatomist Loder was sent for from Jena to select the 
bones which completed the skeleton." The evidence 

* I tell this story from my recollection of Stahr's account in his 
"Weimar und Jena," an account which was confirmed to me by 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 235 

certainly leaves room for a doubt ; but the receding 
forehead of the skull agrees with the testimony of per- 
sons who knew Schiller, tliat he had, as Ranch said to 
us, a " miserable forehead ;" it agrees, also, with a beau- 
tiful miniature of Schiller, taken when he was about 
twenty. This miniature is deeply interesting ; it shows 
as a youth whose clearly cut features, with the mingled 
fire and melancholy of their expression, could hardly 
have been passed with indifference ; it has the laiiger 
Gdnsehals (long goose-neck) which he gives to his Karl 
Moor ; but instead of the black, sparkling eyes, and the 
gloomy, overhanging, bushy eyebrows he chose for his 
robber hero, it has the fine wavy, auburn locks, and the 
light-blue eyes whicli belong to our idea of pure Ger- 
man race. We may be satisfied that we know at least 
the form of Schiller's features, for in this particular 
his busts and portraits are in striking accordance ; un- 
like the busts and portraits of Goethe, which are a 
proof, if any were wanted, how inevitably subjective 
art is, even when it professes to be purely imitative — 
how the most active perception gives us rather a reflex 
of what we think and feel, than the real sum of objects 
before us. The Goethe of Ranch or of Schwanthaler 
is widely different in form, as well as expression, from 
the Goethe of Stieler ; and Winterberger, the actor, 
who knew Goethe intimately, told us that to him not 
one of all the likenesses, sculptured or painted, seemed 
to have more than a faint resemblance to their original. 
There is, indeed, one likeness, taken in his old age, and 
preserved in the library, which is startling from tlie 

residents in Weimar ; but as I have not the book by me, I cannol 
test the accuracy of my memory. 



236 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR- 

conviction it produces of close resemblance, and Win- 
terberger admitted it to be the best he had seen. It 
is a tinj miniature painted on a small cup, of Dresden 
china, and is so wonderfully executed that a magnifj- 
ing-glass exhibits the perfection of its texture as if it 
were a flower or a butterfly's wing. It is more like 
Stieler's portrait than any other; the massive neck, 
unbent though withered, rises out of his dressing-gown, 
and supports majestically a head from which one 
might imagine (though, alas ! it never is so in reality) 
that the discipline of seventy years had purged away 
all meaner elements than those of the sage and the 
poet — a head which might serve as a type of sublime 
old age. Among the collection of toys and trash, mel- 
ancholy records of the late Grand Duke's eccentricity, 
which occupy the upper rooms of the library, there are 
some precious relics hanging together in a glass case, 
which almost betray one into sympathy with "holy 
coat" worship. They are — Luther's gown, the coat in 
which Gustavus Adolphus was shot, and Goethe's court 
coat and Schlafroch. What a rush of thoughts from 
the mingled memories of the passionate reformer, the 
heroic warrior, and the wise singer ! 

The only one of its great men to whom Weimar has 
at present erected a statue in the open air is Herder. 
His statue, erected in 1850, stands in what is called the 
Herder Platz, with its back to the church in which he 
preached ; in the right hand is a roll bearing his favor- 
ite motto — Licht, Liehe^ Leben (Light, Love, Life), and 
on the pedestal is the inscription — Yon Deutsclien aller 
Ldnde7' (from Germans of all lands). This statue, 
which is by Schaller of Munich, is very much admired j 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 237 

but, remembering the immortal description in the ^' Dich- 
tiing und AVahrheit," of Herder's appearance when 
Goethe saw him for the first time at Strasburg, I was 
disappointed with the parsonic appeal ance of the statue, 
as well as of the bust in the library. The part of the 
town which imprints itself on the memory, next to the 
Herder Platz, is the Markt, a cheerful square, made 
smart by a new Rath-haus. Twice a week it is crowded 
with stalls and country people ; and it is the v^ery pretty 
custom for the band to play in the balcony of the Rath- 
haus about twenty minutes every market-day to delight 
the ears of the peasantry. A head-dress worn by many 
of the old women, and here and there by a young one, 
is, I think, peculiar to Thuringia. Let the fair reader 
imagine half a dozen of her broadest French sashes dyed 
black, and attached as streamers to the back of a stiff 
black skull-cap, ornamented in front with a large bow, 
which stands out like a pair of donkey's ears ; let her fur- 
ther imagine, mingled with the streamers of ribbon, equal- 
ly broad pendants of a thick woollen texture, something 
like the fringe of an urn-rug, and she will have an idea 
of the head-dress in which I have seen a Thuringian 
damsel figure on a hot summer's day. Two houses in 
the Markt are pointed out as those from which Tetzel 
published his indulgences and Luther thundered against 
them ; but it is difficult to one's imagination to conjure 
up scenes of theological controversy in Weimar, where, 
from princes down to pastry-cooks, rationalism is taken 
as a matter of course. 

Passing along the Schiller-strasse, a broad, pleasant 
street, one is thrilled by the inscription, Hier vjohnte 
Schiller^ over the door of a small house with casts in its 



238 THREE- MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

bow-window. Mount up to the second story and you 
will see Schiller's study very nearly as it was when he 
worked in it. It is a cheerful room with three windows, 
two towards the street and one looking on a little gar- 
den which divides his house from the neighboring one. 
The writing-table, which he notes as an important pur- 
chase in one of his letters to Korner, and in one of the 
drawers of which he used to keep rotten apples for the 
sake of their scent, stands near the last-named window, 
60 that its light would fall on his left hand. On another 
side of the room is his piano, with his guitar lying npon 
it; and above these hangs an ugly print of an Ital- 
ian scene, which has a companion equally ugly on an- 
other wall. Strange feelings it awakened in me to run 
my fingers over the keys of the little piano and call 
forth its tones, now so queer and feeble, like those of an 
invalided old woman whose voice could once make a 
heart beat with fond passion or soothe its angry pulses 
into calm. The bedstead on which Schiller died has 
been removed into the study, from the small bedroom 
behind, which is now empty. A little table is placed 
close to the head of the bed, with his drinking-glass 
upon it, and on the wall above the bedstead there is a 
beautiful sketch of him lying dead. He used to occupy 
the whole of the second floor. It contains, besides 
the study and bedroom, an antechamber, now furnished 
with casts and prints on sale, in order to remunerate the 
custodiers of the house, and a salon tricked out, since his 
death, with a symbolical cornice, statues, and a carpet 
worked by the ladies of Weimar. 

Goethe's house is much more important-looking, but, 
to English eyes, far from being the palatial residence 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAK. 239 

which might be expected, from the descriptions of Ger- 
man writers. The entrance-hall is indeed rather impos- 
ing, with its statues in niches, and its broad staircase, 
but the rest of the house is not proportionately spacious 
and elegant. The only part of the house open to the 
public — and this only on a Friday — is the principal suite 
of rooms which contain his collection of casts, pictures, 
cameos, etc. This collection is utterly insignificant, ex- 
cept as having belonged to him ; and one turns away 
from bad pictures and familiar casts, to linger over the 
manuscript of the wonderful " Romische Elegein," writ- 
ten by himself in the Itab'an character. It is to be re- 
gretted that a large sum offered for this house by the 
German Diet was refused by the Goethe family, in the 
hope, it is said, of obtaining a still larger sum from that 
mythical English Croesus always ready to turn fabulous 
sums into dead capital, who haunts the imagination of 
Continental people. One of the most fitting tributes a 
nation can pay to its great dead is to make their habita- 
tion, like their works, a public possession, a shrine where 
affectionate reverence may be inore vividly reminded 
that the being who has bequeathed to us immortal 
thoughts or immortal deeds, had to endure the daily 
struggle with the petty details, perhaps with the sordid 
cares of this working-day world ; and it is a sad pity that 
Goethe's study, bedroom, and library, so fitted to call 
up that kind of sympathy, because they are preserved 
just as he left them, should be shut out from all but 
the specially privileged. We were happy enough to be 
among these, to look through the mist of rising tears at 
the dull study with its two small windows, and without 
a single object chosen for the sake of luxury or beauty ; 



2J:0 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

at the dark little bedroom with the bed on which he 
died, and the arm-chair where he took his morning cof- 
fee as he read ; at the library with its common deal 
shelves, and books containing his own paper-marks. In 
the presence of this hardy simplicity, the contrast sug- 
gests itself of the study at Abbotsford, with its elegant 
Gothic fittings, its delicious easy-chair, and its oratory of 
painted glass. 

We were very much amused at the privacy with which 
people keep their shops at Weimar. Some of them 
have not so much as their names written up; and there 
is so much indifference of manner towards customers 
that one might suppose every shopkeeper was a salaried 
functionary employed by government. The distribu- 
tion of commodities, too, is carried on according to a pe- 
culiar Weimarian logic; we bought our lemons at a 
ropemaker's, and should not have felt ourselves very un- 
reasonable if we had asked for shoes at a stationer's. 
As to competition, I should think a clever tradesman or 
artificer is almost as free from it at Weimar as ^scu- 
lapius or Vulcan in the days of old Olympus. Here is an 
illustration. Our landlady's husband was called the ^^sits- 
ser Rabenhorst," by way of distinguishing him from a 
brother of his who was the reverse of sweet. This Ra- 
benhorst, who was not sweet, but who nevertheless dealt 
in sweets, for he was a confectioner, was so utter a rogue 
that any transaction with him was avoided almost as 
much as if he had been the Evil One himself, yet so 
clever a rogue that he always managed to keep on the 
windy side of the law. Nevertheless, he had so many 
dainties in the confectionery line — so viel Siissigkeiten 
und Lecherhissen — that people bent on giving a fine en^ 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 241 

tertainment were at last constrained to saj, " After all, 
I must go to Rabenhorst ;" and so be got abundant 
custom, in spite of general detestation. 

A very fair dinner is to be had at several tables d^Kote 
in Weimar for ten or twelve groscben (a shilling or 
fifteen pence). The Germans certainly excel us in their 
Meldspeise^ or farinaceous puddings, and in their mode 
of cooking vegetables ; they are bolder and more im- 
aginative in their combination of sauces, fruits, and vege- 
tables with animal food, and they are faithful to at least 
one principle of dietetics — variety. The only thing at 
table we have any pretext for being supercilious about 
is the quality and dressing of animal food. The meat 
at a table cVhote in Thuringia, and even Berlin, except 
in the very lirst hotels, bears about the same relation to 
ours as horse-flesh probably bears to German beef and 
mutton ; and an Englishman with a bandage over his 
eyes would often be sorely puzzled to guess the kind of 
flesh he was eating. For example, the only flavor we 
could ever discern in hare, which is a very frequent 
dish, was that of the more or less disagreeable fat which 
predominated in the dressing; and roast meat seems to 
be considered an extravagance rarely admissible. A 
melancholy sight is a flock of Weimarian sheep, followed 
or led by their shepherd. They are as dingy as London 
sheep, and far more skinny ; indeed, an Englishman who 
dined with us said the sight of the sheep had set hiu) 
against mutton. Still, the variety of dishes you get for 
ten groschen is something marvellous to those who have 
been accustomed to English charges, and among the six 
courses it is not a great evil to find a dish or two the 
reverse of appetizing. I suppose, however, that the liv* 

11 



242 THKEE MONTHS IN WEIMAR, 

ing at tables d'hote gives one no correct idea of the mode 
in which the people live at home. The basis of the 
national :Jood seems to be_ raw ham and sausage, with a 
copious superstratum of Blauhraut, Sauerkraut^ and 
black bread. Sausage seems to be to the German what 
potatoes were to the Irish — the sine qua non of bodilj 
sustenance, Goethe asks the Frau von Stein to send 
liim so eine Wu?'st when he wants to have a make-shift 
dinner away from home; and in his letters to Kestner 
he is enthusiastic about the delights of dining on Blau- 
hraut and Leberwurst (blue cabbage and liver sausage). 
If Kraut and Wurst may be called the solid prose of 
Thuringian diet, fish and Ktichen (generally a heavy 
kind of fruit tart) are the poetry : the German appetite 
disports itself with these as the English appetite does 
with ices and whipped creams. 

At the beginning of August, when we arrived in 
Weimar, almost every one was away — "at the Baths," 
of course — except the tradespeople. As birds nidify 
in the spring, so Germans wash themselves in the sum- 
mer; their Waschungstrieh acts strongly only at a par- 
ticular time of the year; during all the rest, apparently, 
a decanter and a sugar-basin or pie-dish are an ample 
toilet-service for them. We were quite contented, 
however, that it was not yet the Weimar " season," 
fashionably speaking, since it was the very best time 
for enjoying something far better than Weimar gayeties 
— the lovely park and environs. It was pleasant, too, 
to see the good bovine citizens enjoying life in their 
quiet fashion. Unlike our English people, they take 
pleasure into their calculations, and seem regularly to 
set aside part of their time for recreation. It is under 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 243 

stood that something is to be done in life besides busi- 
ness and housewifery : the women take their children 
and their knitting to the Erholung^ or walk with their 
husbands to Belvedere, or in some other direction where 
a cup of coffee is to be had. The Erholung^ by the 
way, is a pretty garden, with shady walks, abundant 
seats, an orchestra, a ball-room, and a place for refresh- 
ments. The higher classes are subscribers and visitors 
here as well as the bourgeoisie y but there are several 
resorts of a similar kind frequented by the latter ex- 
clusively. The reader of Goethe will remember his 
little poem, " Die Lustigen von Weimar," which still in- 
dicates the round of amusements in this simple capital : 
the walk to Belvedere or Tiefurt ; the excursion to Jena, 
or some other trip, not made expensive by distance ; the 
round game at cards ; the dance ; the theatre ; and so 
many other enjoyments to be had by a people not bound 
to give dinner-parties and " keep up a position." 

It is charming to see how real an amusement the 
theatre is to the Weimar people. The greater number 
of places are occupied by subscribers, and there is no 
fuss about toilet or escort. The ladies come alone, 
and slip quietly into their places without need of "pro- 
tection" — a proof of civilization perhaps more than 
equivalent to our pre-eminence in patent locks and car- 
riage springs ; and after the performance is over you 
may see the same ladies following their servants, with 
lanterns, through streets innocent of gas, in which an 
oil-lamp, suspended from a rope slung across from house 
to house, occasionally reveals to you the shafts of a cart 
or omnibus, conveniently placed for you to run upon 
them. 



244 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

A yearly autumn festival at Weimar is the Vogel- 
schiessen, or Bird-shooting; but the reader must not 
let his imagination wander at this word into fields and 
brakes. The bird here concerned is of wood, and the 
shooters, instead of wandering over breezy down and 
common, are shut up, day after day, in a room clouded 
with tobacco-smoke, that they may take their turn at 
shooting with the rifle from the window of a closet 
about the size of a sentinel's box. However, this is a 
mighty enjoyment to the Thuringian yeoman ly, and an 
occasion of profit to our friend Punch, and other itiner- 
ant performers ; for while the Yogelschiesseii lasts, a sort 
of fair is held in the field where the marksmen assemble. 

Among the quieter every-day pleasures of the Wei- 
marians, perhaps the most delightful is the stroll on a 
bright afternoon or evening to the Duke's summer resi- 
dence of Belvedere, about two miles from Weimar. As 
I have said, a glorious avenue of chestnut-trees leads all 
the way from the town to the entrance of the grounds, 
which are open to all the world as much as to the Duke 
himself. Close to the palace and its subsidiary build- 
ings there is an inn, for the accommodation of the good 
people who come to take dinner or any other meal here, 
by way of holiday-making. A sort of pavilion stands 
on a spot commanding a lovely view of Weimar and its 
valley, and here the Weimarians constantly come on 
summer and autumn evenings to smoke a cigar or drink 
a cup of coffee. In one wing of the little palace, which 
is made smart by wooden cupolas, with gilt pinnacles, 
there is a saloon, which I recommend to the imitation 
of tasteful people in their country-houses. It has no 
decoration but that of natural foliage : ivy is trained at 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAK. 245 

regular intervals up the pure white walls, and all round 
the edge of the ceiling, 'so as to form pilasters and a 
cornice; ivy again, trained on trellis-work, forms a blind 
to the window, which looks towards the entrance-court ; 
and beautiful ferns, arranged in tall baskets, are placed 
here and there against tlie walls. The furniture is of 
light cane-work. Another pretty thing here is the 
Natur-Theater — a theatre constructed with living trees, 
trimmed into walls and side scenes. We pleased our- 
selves for a little while with thinking that this was one 
of the places where Goethe acted in his own dramas, 
but we afterwards learned that it was not made until 
his acting days were over. The inexhaustible charm of 
Belvedere, however, is the grounds, which are laid out 
with a taste worthy of a first-rate landscape-gardener. 
The tall and graceful limes, plane-trees, and weeping 
birches, the little basins of water here and there, with 
fountains playing in the middle of them, and with a 
fringe of broad-leaved plants, or other tasteful border- 
ing round them, the gradual descent towards the river, 
and the hill clothed with firs and pines on the opposite 
side, forming a fine dark background for the various and 
light foliage of the trees that ornament the gardens — 
all this we went again and again to enjoy, from the time 
when everything was of a vivid green until the Vir- 
ginian creepers which festooned the silver stems of the 
birches were bright scarlet, and the touch of autumn 
had turned all the green to gold. One of the spots to 
linger in is at a semicircular seat against an artificial 
rock, on which are placed large glass globes of different 
colors. It is wonderful to see with what minute per- 
fection the scenery around is painted in these globes. 



246 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 

Each is like a pre-Raphaelite picture, with every little 
detail of gravelly walk, mossy bank, and delicately 
leaved, interlacing boughs presented in accurate minia- 
ture. 

In the opposite direction to Belvedere lies Tiefurt, 
with its small park and tiny chateau, formerly the resi- 
dence of the Duchess Amalia, the mother of Carl 
August, and the friend and patroness of Wieland, but 
now apparently serving as little else than a receptacle 
for the late Duke Carl Friedrich's rather childish col- 
lections. In the second story there is a suite of rooms, 
so small that the largest of them does not take up as 
much space as a good dining-table, and each of these 
doll-house rooms is crowded with prints, old china, and 
all sorts of knick-knacks and rococo wares. The park 
is a little paradise. The Ilm is seen here to the best 
advantage: it is clearer than at Weimar, and winds 
about gracefully between the banks, on one side steep, 
and curtained with turf and shrubs, or fine trees. It 
was here, at a point where the bank forms a promontory 
into the river, that Goethe and his court friends got up 
the performance of an operetta, "Die Fischerin," by 
torchlight. On the way to Tiefurt lies the Webicht, a 
beautiful wood, through which run excellent carriage- 
roads and grassy footpaths. It was a ricli enjoyment to 
skirt this wood along the Jena road, and see the sky 
arching grandly down over the open fields on the other 
side of us, the evening red flushing the west over the 
town, and the stars coming out as if to relieve the sun 
in its watch ; or to take the winding road through the 
wood, under its tall, overarching trees, now bending 
their mossy trunks forward, now standing with the 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 247 

sfcately erectness of lofty pillars ; or to saunter along the 
grassy footpaths where the sunlight streamed through 
the fairy-like foliage of the silvery barked birches. 

Stout pedestrians who go to Wiemar will do well to 
make a walking excursion, as we did, to Ettei*sburg, a 
more distant summer residence of the Grand Duke, in- 
teresting to us beforehand as the scene of private the- 
atricals and sprees in the Goethe days. We set out on 
one of the brightest and hottest mornings that August 
ever bestowed, and it required some resolution to trudge 
along the shadeless chaussee, which formed the first two 
or three miles of our way. One compensating pleasure 
was the sight of the beautiful mountain-ash-trees in full 
berry, which, alternately with cherry-trees, border the 
road for a considerable distance. At last we rested from 
our broiling walk on the borders of a glorious pine- 
wood, so extensive that the trees in the distance form a 
complete wall with their trunks, and so give one a twi- 
light very welcome on a summer's noon. Under these 
pines you tread on a carpet of the softest moss, so that 
you hear no sound of a footstep, and all is as solenm 
and still as in the crypt of a cathedral. Presently we 
passed out of the pine-wood into one of limes, beeches, 
and other trees of transparent and light foliage, and 
from this again we emerged into the open space of the 
Ettersburg Park in front of the Schloss, which is finely 
placed on an eminence commanding a magnificent view 
of the far-reaching woods. Prince Piickler Muskau has 
been of service here by recommending openings to be 
made in the woods, in the taste of the English parks. 
The Schloss, which is a favorite residence of the Grand 
Duke, is a house of very moderate size, and no preten* 



24:8 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAK. 

sion of any kind. Its stuccoed walls, and doors long 
unacquainted with fresh paint, would look distressingly 
shabby to the owner of a villa at Richmond or Twicken- 
ham ; but much beauty is procured here at slight ex- 
pense, by the tasteful disposition of creepers on the bal- 
ustrades, and pretty vases full of plants ranged along the 
steps, or suspended in the little piazza beneath them. A 
walk through a beech- wood took us to the Mooshutte, 
in front of which stands the famous beech from whence 
Goethe denounced Jacobi's " Woldemar." The bark is 
covered with initials cut by him and his friends. 

People who only allow themselves to be idle under 
tlie pretext of hydropathizing, may find all the appara- 
tus necessary to satisfy their conscience at Bercka, a vil- 
lage seated in a lovely valley about six miles from Wei- 
mar. Now and then a Weimar family takes lodgings 
here for the summer, retiring from the quiet of the 
capital to the deeper quiet of Bercka ; but generally the 
place seems not much frequented. It would be difiicult 
to imagine a more peace-inspiring scene than this little 
valley. The hanging woods ; the soft coloring and 
graceful outline of the uplands ; the village, with its 
roofs and spire of a reddish-violet hue, muffled in luxu- 
riant trees ; the white Kurhaus glittering on a grassy 
slope ; the avenue of poplars contrasting its pretty prim- 
ness with the wild, bushy outline of the wood-covered 
hill, which rises abruptly from the smooth, green mead- 
ows; the clear, winding stream, now sparkling in the 
sun, now hiding itself under soft gray willows — all this 
makes an enchanting picture. The walk to Bercka and 
back was a favorite expedition with us and a few Wei- 
mar friends^ for the road thither is a pleasant one, lead 



THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 249 

iiig at first through open, cultivated fields, dotted here 
and there with villages, and then through wooded hills 
— tne outskirts of the Thuringian Forest. We used not 
to despise the fine plums which hung in tempting abun- 
dance by the roadside ; but we afterwards found that 
we had been deceived in supposing ourselves free to 
pluck them, a? if it were the golden age, and that we 
w^ere liable to a penalty of ten groschen for our depre- 
dations. 

But I must not allow myself to be exhaustive on pleas- 
ures which seem monotonous when told, though in en- 
joying them one is as far from wishing them to be more 
various as from wishing for any change in the sweet 
sameness of successive summer days. I will only ad- 
vise the reader who has yet to make excursions in Thu- 
ringia to visit Jena, less for its traditions than for its 
fine scenery, which makes it, as Goethe says, a delicious 
place, in spite of its dull, ugly streets; and exhort him, 
above all, to brave the discomforts of a Postwagen for 
the sake of getting to Ilmenau. Here he will find the 
grandest pine-clad hills, with endless walks under their 
solemn shades ; beech-woods where every tree is a pict- 
ure ; an air that he will breathe with as conscious a pleas- 
ure as if he were taking iced water on a hot day ; baths 
ad lihituTTi^ with a douche lofty and tremendous enough 
to invigorate the giant Cormoran ; and, more than all, 
one of the most interesting relics of Goethe, who had a 
great love for Ilmenau. This is the small wooden house, 
on the height called the Kickelhahn, where he often 
lived in his long retirements here, and where you may 
see written by his own hand, near the window-frame, 

those wonderful lines — perhaps the finest expression yet 
13 11* 



250 THREE MONTHS IX WKIMAR. 

given to the sense of resignation inspired by tlie sul> 
lime calm of Nature — 

" Ueber alien Gipfeln 
Ist Ruh, 

In alien Wipfeln 
Spiirest du 
Kaum einen Hauch ; 
Die Vogeleiu schweigen im Waldo 
Warte uur, balde 
Buliest du aucb.'' 



ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 

Fellow-wokkmen, I am not going to take up your 
time by complimenting you. It has been the fashion 
to compliment kings and other authorities when they 
have come into power, and to tell them that, under 
their wise and beneficent rule, happiness would certain- 
ly overflow the land. But the end has not always cor- 
responded to that beginning. If it were true that we 
who work for wages had more of the wisdom and vir- 
tue necessary to the right use of power than has been 
shown by the aristocratic and mercantile classes, we 
should not glory much in that fact, or consider that it 
carried with it any near approach to infallibility. 

In my opinion, there has been too much compliment- 
ing of that sort ; and whenever a speaker, whether he 
is one of ourselves or not, wastes our time in boasting 
or flattery, I say, let us hiss him. If we have the be- 
ginning of wisdom, which is, to know a little truth about 
ourselves, we know that as a body we are neither very 
wise nor very virtuous. And to prove this, I will not 
point specially to our own habits and doings, but to the 
general state of the country. Any nation that had within 
It a majority of men — and we are the nwijority — possessed 
of nmch wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the bad 
practices, the commercial lying and swindling, the poi- 
sonous adulteration of goods, the retail cheating^ and the 



252 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

political bribery, which are carried on boldly in the 
midst of US. A majority has the power of creating a 
public opinion. We could groan and hiss before we 
had the franchise : if we had groaned and hissed in the 
right place, if we had discerned better between good 
and evil, if the' multitude of us artisans, and factory 
Jiands, and miners, and laborers of all sorts, had been 
skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober — and I 
don't see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere 
without those qualities — we should have made an audi- 
ence that would have shamed the other classes out of 
their share in the national vices. We should have had 
better members of Parliament, better religious teachers, 
honester tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less im- 
pudence in infamous and brutal men ; and we should 
not have had among us the abomination of men calling 
themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-got- 
ten gains. I say, it is not possible for any society in 
which there is a very large body of wise and virtuous 
men to be as vicious as our society is — to have as low a 
standard of right and wrong, to have so much belief in 
falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a- notion 
of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above 
his fellows. Therefore, let us have done with this non- 
sense about our being much better than the rest of our 
countrymen, or the pretence that that was a reason why 
we ought to have such an extension of the franchise as 
has been given to us. The reason for our having the 
franchise, as I want presently to show, lies somewhere 
else than in our personal good qualities, and does not 
in the least lie in any high betting chance that a dele- 
g.ite is a better man than a duke, or that a Sheffield 



BY FELIX HOLT. 253 

grinder is a better man than any one of the firm he 
works for. 

Howevgr, we have got our franchise now. We have 
been sarcastically called in the House of Commons the 
future masters of the country ; and if that sarcasm con- 
tains any truth, it seems to me that the first thing we 
had better think of is, our heavy responsibility ; that is 
to say, the terrible risk we run of working mischief and 
missing good, as others have done before us. Suppose 
certain men, discontented with the irrigation of a coun- 
try which depended for all its prosperity on the right 
direction being given to the waters of a great river, had 
got the management of the irrigation before they were 
quite sure how exactly it could be altered for the better, 
or whether they could command the necessary agency 
for such an alteration. Those men would have a diffi- 
cult and dangerous business on their hands ; and the 
n)ore sense, feeling, and knowledge they had, the more 
they would be likely to tremble rather than to triumph. 
Our situation is not altogether unlike theirs. For gen- 
eral prosperity and well-being is a vast crop, that like 
the corn in Egypt can be come at, not at all by hurried 
snatching, but only by a well-judged, patient process; 
and whether our political power will be any good to 
us now we have got it, must depend entirely on the 
means and materials — the knowledge, ability, and hon- 
esty — we have at command. These three things are 
the only conditions on which we can get an}^ lasting 
benefit, as every clever workman among us knows : he 
knows that for an article to be worth much there must 
be a good invention or plan to go upon, there must be 
well-prepared material, and there must be skilful and 



251 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

honest work in carrying out the plan. And by this 
test we may try those who want to be our leaders. Have 
they anything to offer us besides indignant talk ? When 
they tell us we ought to have this, that, or the other 
thing, can they explain to us any reasonable, fair, safe 
way of getting it ? Can they argue in favor of a par- 
ticular change by showing us pretty closely how the 
change is likely to work? I don't want to decry a just 
indignation ; on the contrary, I should like it to be 
more thorough and general. A wise man, more than 
two thousand years ago, when he was asked what would 
most tend to lessen injustice in the world, said, " That 
every bystander should feel as indignant at a wrong as 
if he himself were the sufferer." Let us cherish such 
indignation. But the long -growing evils of a great 
nation are a tangled business, asking for a good deal 
more than indignation in order to be got rid of. In- 
dignation is a fine war-horse, but the war-horse must be 
ridden by a man ; it must be ridden by rationality, skill, 
courage, armed with the right weapons, and taking defi- 
nite aim. 

We have reason to be discontented with many things, 
and, looking back either through the history of Eng- 
land to much earlier generations or to the legislation 
and administration of later times, we are justified in 
saying that many of the evils under which our country 
now suffers are the consequences of folly, ignorance, 
neglect, or self-seeking in those who, at different times, 
have wielded the powers of rank, office, and money. 
But the more bitterly we feel this, the more loudly we 
utter it, the stronger is the obligation we lay on our- 
selves to beware lest we also, by a too hasty wresting 



BY FELIX HOLT. li^J 

of measures which seem to promise an immediate par- 
tial relief, make a worse time of it for our own genera- 
tion, and leave a bad inheritance to our children. The 
deepest curse of wrong-doing, whether of the foolisli or 
wicked sort, is that its effects are difficult to be undone. 
I suppose there is hardly anything more to be shud- 
dered at than that part of the history of disease which 
shows how, when a man injures his constitution by a life 
of vicious excess, his children and grandchildren inherit 
diseased bodies and minds, and how the effects of that 
unhappy inheritance continue to spread beyond our cal- 
culation. This is only one example of the law by \,hich 
human lives are linked together : another example of 
what we complain of when we point to our pauperism, 
to the brutal ignorance of multitudes among our fellow- 
countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on us by 
blamable wars, to the wasteful channels made for the 
public money, to the expense and trouble of getting 
justice, and call these the effects of bad rule. This is 
the law that we all bear the yoke of, the law of no man's 
making, and which no man can undo. Everybody now 
sees an example of it in the case of Ireland. We who 
are living now are sufferers by the wrong-doing of those 
who lived before us ; we are sufferers by each other's 
wrong-doing ; and the children who come after us are 
and will be sufferers from the same causes. Will any 
man say he doesn't care for that law — it is nothing to 
him — what he wants is to better himself ? With what 
face then will he complain of any injury? If he savs 
that in politics or in any sort of social action he will 
not care to know what are likely to be the consequences 
to others besides himself, he is defending tne very 



250 ADDRESS TO WORKING MENj 

worst doings that have brought about his discontent. 
He might as well say that there is no better rule need- 
ful for men than that each should tug and rive for what 
will please him, without caring how that tugging will 
act on the fine widespread network of society in which 
he is fast meshed. If any man taught that as a doc- 
trine, we should know him for a fool. But there are 
men who act upon it : every scoundrel, for example, 
whether he is a rich religious scoundrel who lies and 
cheats on a large scale, and will perhaps come and ask 
you to send him to Parliament, or a poor pocket-picking 
scoundrel, who will steal your loose pence while you 
are listening round the platform. None of us are so 
ignorant as not to know that a society, a nation, is held 
together by just the opposite doctrine and action — by 
the dependence of men on each other and the sense 
they have of a common interest in preventing injury. 
And we working men are, I think, of all classes the last 
that can afford to forget this ; for if we did we should 
be much like sailors cutting away the timbers of our 
own ship to warm our grog with. For what else is the 
meaning of our Trades-unions ? What else is the mean- 
ing of every Hag we carry, every procession we make, 
every crowd we collect for the sake of making some 
protest on behalf of our body as receivers of wages, if 
not this; that it is our interest to stand by each other, 
and that this being the common interest, no one of us 
will try to make a good bargain for himself without 
considering what will be good for his fellows? And 
every member of a union believes that the wider he can 
spread his union, the stronger and surer will be the ef- 
fect of it. So I think I shall be borne out in saying 



BY FELIX HOLT. 257 

that a working man who can put two and two together, 
or take three from four and see what will be the re- 
mainder, can understand that a society, to be well off, 
must be made up chiefly of men who consider the gen- 
eral good as well as their own. 

Well, but taking the world as it is — and this is one 
way we must take it when we want to find out how it 
can be improved — no society is made up of a single 
class : society stands before us like that wonderful piece 
of life, the human body, with all its various parts de- 
pending on one another, and with a terrible liability to 
get wrong because of that delicate dependence. We 
all know how many diseases the human body is apt to 
suffer from, and how difficult it is even for the doctors 
to find out exactly where the seat or beginning of the 
disorder is. That is because the body is made up of so 
many various parts, all related to each other, or likely 
all to feel the effect if any one of them goes wrong. It 
is somewhat the same with our old nations or societies. 
No society ever stood long in the world without getting 
to be composed of different classes. Now, it is all pre- 
tence to say that there is no such thing as Class Interest. 
It is clear that if any particular number of men get a 
particular benefit from any existing institution, they 
are likely to band together, in order to keep up that 
benefit and increase it, until it is perceived to be unfair 
and injurious to another large number, who get knowl- 
edge and strength enough to set up a resistance. And 
this, again, has been part of the history of every great 
society since history began. But the simple reason for 
this being, that any large body of men is likely to have 

more of stupidity, narrowness, and greed than of far- 
13* 



258 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

siglitedness and generosity, it is plain that the numbei 
who resist unfairness and injury are in danger of becom- 
ing injurious in their turn. And in this way a justifi- 
able resistance has become a damaging convulsion, mab 
ing everything worse instead of better. This has been 
seen so often that we ought to profit a little by the ex- 
perience. So long as there is selfishness in men ; so 
long as they have not found out for themselves institu- 
tions which express and carry into practice the truth 
that the highest interest of mankind must at last be 
a common and not a divided interest ; so long as the 
gradual operation of steady causes has not made that 
truth a part of every man's knowledge and feeling, just 
as we now not only know that it is good for our health 
to be cleanly, but feel that cleanliness is only another 
word for comfort, which is the under-side or lining of 
all pleasure ; so long, I say, as men wink at their own 
knowingness, or hold their heads high, because they 
have got an advantage over their fellows, so long Class 
Interest will be in danger of making itself felt injuri- 
ously. No set of men will get any sort of power with- 
out being in danger of wanting more than their right 
share. But, on the other hand, it is just as certain that 
no set of men will get angry at having less than tlieir 
right share, and set up a claim on that ground, without 
falling into just the same danger of exacting too much, 
and exacting it in wrong ways. It's human nature we 
have got to work with all round, and nothing else. That 
seems like saying something very commonplace — 
nay, obvious ; as if one should say that where there are 
hands there are mouths. Yet, to hear a good deal 
of the speechifying and to see a good deal of th<j 



BY FELIX HOLT. 259 

action that goes forward, one might suppose it was for- 
gotten. 

Bat I come back to this : that, in our old society, there 
are old institutions, and among the various distinctions 
and inherited advantages of classes, which have shaped 
themselves along with all the wonderful slow-growing 
system of things made up of our laws, our commerce, 
and our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, 
such as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, such 
as scientific thought and professional skill. Just as in 
that case I spoke of before, the irrigation of a country, 
which must absolutely have its water distributed or it 
will bear no crop; there are the old channels, the old 
banks, and the old pumps, which must be used as they 
are until new and better have been prepared, or the 
structure of the old has been gradually altered. But it 
would be fool's work to batter down a pump only be- 
cause a better might be made, when yon had no ma- 
chinery ready for a new one : it would be wicked work, 
if villages lost their crops by it. Now the only safe 
way by which society can be steadily improved and our 
worst evils reduced is not by any attempt to do away 
directly with the actually existing class distinctions and 
advantages, as if everybody could have the same sort of 
work, or lead the same sort of life (which none of m^^ 
hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by the turn- 
ing of Class Interests into Class Functions or duties. 
What I mean is, that each class should be urged by the 
surrounding conditions to perform its particular work 
under the strong pressure of responsibility to the nation 
at large ; that our public affairs should be got into a 
state in which there should be no impunity for foolish 



260 'ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

or faithless conduct. In this way, the public judgment 
would sift out incapability and dishonesty from posts 
of high charge, and even personal ambition would nec- 
essarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of 
tlie most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the 
opinions of those around them ; and for one person to 
put on a cap and bells, or to go about dishonest or pal- 
try ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast sum 
of money in having more finery than his neighbors, he 
must be pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. 
Now changes can only be good in proportion as they 
help to bring about this, sort of result : in proportion as 
they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and fel- 
low-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course of 
that substitution class distinctions must inevitably change 
their character, and represent the varying Duties of 
men, not their varying Interests. But this end will not 
come by impatience. " Day will not break the sooner 
because we get up before the twilight." Still less will 
it come by mere undoing, or change merely as change. 
And, moreover, if we believe that it would be uncon- 
ditionally hastened by our getting the franchise, we 
should be what I call superstitious men, believing in 
magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. 
Our getting the franchise will greatly hasten that good 
end in proportion only as every one of us has the knowl- 
edge, the foresight, the conscience, that will make him 
well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nat- 
ure of things in this world has been determined for us 
beforehand, and in such a way that no ship can be ex- 
pected to sail well on a difficult voyage, and reach the 
right port, unless it is well manned : the nature of the 



BY FELIX HOLT. 261 

winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails and the 
cordage, will not accommodate itself to drunken, muti- 
nous sailors. 

You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any 
cant to jou, or of joining in the pretence that everything 
is in a fine way, and need not be made better. What I 
am striving to keep in our minds is the care, the pre- 
caution, with which we should go about making things 
better, so that the public order may not be destroyed, 
so that no fatal shock may be given to this society of 
ours, this living body in which our lives are bound up. 
After the Keform Bill of 1832 I was in an election riot, 
which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what public 
disorder must always be ; and I have never forgotten 
that the riot was brought about chiefly by the agency 
of dishonest men who professed to be on the people's 
side. Now, the danger hanging over change is great, 
just in proportion as it tends to produce such disorder 
by giving any large number of ignorant men, whose 
notions of what is good are of a low and brutal sort, the 
belief that they have got power into tlieir hands, and 
may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look 
round us and say that he sees no signs of any such dan- 
ger now, and that our national condition is running along 
like a clear, broadening stream, safe not to get choked 
with mud, I call him a cheerful man ; perhaps he does his 
own gardening, and seldom takes exercise far away from 
home. To us who have no gardens, and often walk 
abroad, it is plain that we can never get into a bit of a 
crowd but we must rub clothes with a set of Roughs, 
who have the worst vices of the worst rich — who are 
gamblers, sots, libertines, knaves, or else mere sensual 



262 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

simpletons and victims. They are the ugly crop that 
has sprung up while the stewards have been sleeping . 
they are the multiplying brood begotten by parents who 
have been left without all teaching save that of a too 
craving body, without all well-being save the fading de- 
lusions of drugged beer and gin. Tliey are the hideous 
margin of society, at one edge drawing towards it the 
undesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening im- 
perceptibly into the lowest criminal class. Here is ono 
of the evils which cannot be got rid of quickly, and 
against which any of us who have got sense, decency, 
and instruction have need to watch. That these degraded 
fellow-men could really get the mastery in a persistent dis- 
obedience to the laws and in a struggle to subvert order, 
I do not believe ; but wretched calamities would come 
from the very beginning of such a struggle, and the con- 
tinuance of it would be a civil war, in which the inspira- 
tion on both sides might soon cease to be even a false 
notion of good, and might become the direct savage im- 
pulse of ferocity. We have all to see to it th^t we do 
not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in 
the breasts of our generation — that we do not help to 
poison the nation's blood, and make richer provision for 
bestiality to come. We know well enough that op- 
pressors have sinned this way — that oppression has 
notoriously made men mad ; and we are determin'^d to 
resist oppression. But let us, if possible, show that we 
can keep sane in our resistance, and shape our means 
more and more reasonably towards the least haroifnl, 
and therefore the speediest, attainment of our end. Let 
us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to be driven 
mad, but can keep that sober determination which alone 



BY FELIX HOLT. 263 

gives mastery over the adaptation of means. And a 
first guarantee of this sanity will be to act as if we un- 
derstood that the fundamental duty of a governr" .:"*• 
is to preserve order, to enforce obedience of the laws. It 
has been held hitherto that a man can be depended on 
as a guardian of order only when he has much money 
and comfort to lose. But a better state of things would 
be, that men who had little money and not much conj- 
fort should still be guardians of order, because they had 
sense to see that disorder would do no good, and had a 
heart of justice, pity, and fortitude, to keep them from 
making more misery only because they felt some misery 
themselves. There are thousands of artisans who have 
already shown tliis fine spirit, and have endured much 
with patient heroism. If such a spirit spread, and 
penetrated us all, we should soon become the mastrTs 
of the country in the best sense and to the best end. 
For, the public order being preserved, there can be no 
government in future that will not be determined by 
our insistance on our fair and practicable demands. It 
is only by disorder that our demands will be choked, 
that we shall find ourselves lost among a brutal rabble, 
with all the intelligence of the country opposed to us, 
and see government in the shape of guns that will sweep 
us down in the ignoble martyrdom of fools. 

It has been a too common notion that to insist much 
on the preservation of order is the part of a selfish 
aristocracy and a selfish commercial class, because among 
these, in the nature of things, have been found the op- 
ponents of change. I am a Radical ; and, what is more, 
I am not a Radical with a title or a French cook or even 
an entrance into fine society. I expect great changes, 



264 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

and I desire them. But I don't expect them to come 
in a huriy, by mere inconsiderate sweeping. A Hercules 
'vv..h a big besom is a fine thing for a filthy stable, but 
not for weeding a seed-bed, where his besom would soon 
make a barren floor. 

That is old-fashioned talk, some one may say. We 
know all that. 

Yes, when things are put in an extreme way, most 
people think they know them ; but, after all, they are 
comparatively few who see the small degrees by which 
those extremes are arrived at, or have the resolution and 
self-control to resist the little impulses by which they 
creep on surely towards a fatal end. Does anybody set 
out meaning to ruin himself, or to drink himself to 
death, or to waste his life so that he becomes a despic- 
Sihje old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in 
H^'^nter? Yet there are plenty, of whose lot this is the 
pitiable story. Well, now, supposing us all to have the 
best intentions, we working men, as a body, run some 
risk of bringing evil on the nation in that unconscious 
manner — half-hurrying, half-pushed in a jostling march 
towards an end we are not thinking of. For just as 
there are many things which we know better and feel 
much more strongly than the richer, softer-handed classes 
can know or feel them, so there are many things — 
many precious benefits — which we, by the very fact of 
our privations, our lack of leisure and instruction, are 
not so likely to be aware of and take into our account. 
Those precious benefits form a chief part of what I may 
call the common estate of society ; a wealth over and 
above buildings, machinery, produce, shipping, and so on, 
though closely connected with these : a wealth of a more 



BY FELIX nOLT. 265 

delicate kind, that we may more unconsciously bmig 
into danger, doing barm and not knowing that we do it. 
I mean that treasure of knowledge, science, poetry, re- 
finement of thought, feeling, and manners, great mem- 
ories, and the interpretation of great records, which is 
carried on from the minds of one generation to the 
minds of another. This is something distinct from the 
indulgences of luxury and the pursuit of vain finery ; 
and one of the hardships in the lot of working men is 
that they have been for the most part shut out from 
sharing in this treasure. It can make a man's life very 
great, very full of delight, though he has no smart 
furniture and no horses ; it also yields a great deal of 
discovery that corrects error, and of invention that 
lessens bodily pain, and must at last make life easier 
for all. 

Now the security of this treasure demands, not only 
the preservation of order, but a certain patience on our 
part with many institutions and facts of various kinds, 
especially touching the accumulation of wealth, which, 
from the light we stand in, we are more likely to dis- 
cern the evil than the good of. It is constantly the 
task of practical wisdom not to say, -' This is good, and 
I will have it," but to say, " This is the less of two un- 
avoidable evils, and I will bear it." And this treasure 
of knowledge, which consists in the fine activity, the 
exalted vision of many minds, is bound up at present 
with conditions which have much evil in them. Just 
as in the case of material wealth and its distribution 
we are obliged to take the selfishness and weaknesses 
of human nature into account, and, however we insist 

that men might act better, are forced, unless we are 

12 



266 ADDRESS TO WOEKING MEJT, 

fanatical simpletons, to consider how thej are likelj ta 
act ; so in this matter of the wealth that is carried in 
men's minds, we have to reflect that the too absolute 
predominance of a class whose wants have been of a 
common sort, who are chiefly struggling to get better 
and more food, clothing, shelter, and bodily recreation, 
may lead to hasty measures for the sake of having 
things more fairl)^ shared, which, even if they did not 
fail of their object, would at last debase the life of the 
nation. Do anything which will throw the classes who 
hold the treasures of knowledge — nay, I may say, the 
treasure of refined needs — into the background, cause 
them to withdraw from public affairs, stop too suddenly 
any of the sources by which their leisure and ease are 
furnished, rob them of the chances by which they may 
be influential and pre-eminent, and you do something 
as short-sighted as the acts of France and Spain when 
in jealousy and wrath, not altogether unprovoked, they 
drove from among thein races and classes that held the 
traditions of handicraft and agriculture. You injure 
your own inheritance and the inheritance of your chil- 
dren. You may truly say that this which I call tlie 
common estate of society has been anything but com- 
mon to you ; but the same may be said, by many of us, 
of the sunlight and the air, of the skj^ and the fields, of 
parks and holiday games. Nevertheless, that these 
blessings exist makes life worthier to us, and urges us 
the more to energetic, likely means of getting our share 
in them ; and I say, let us watch carefully, lest we do 
anything to lessen this treasure which is held in the 
minds of men, while we exert ourselves first of all, and 
to the very utmost, that we and our children may snare 



BY FELIX HOLT. 267 

in all its benefits. Yes ; exert ourselves to the utmost 
to break the yoke of ignorance. If we demand more 
leisure, more ease in our lives, let us show that we don't 
deserve the reproach of wanting to shirk that industry 
which, in some form or other, every man, whether rich 
or poor, should feel himself as much bound to as he is 
bound to decency. Let us show that we want to have 
some time and strength left to us, that we may use it, 
not for brutal indulgence, but for the rational exercise 
of the faculties which make us men. Without this no 
political measures can benefit us. No political institu- 
tion will alter the nature of Ignorance, or hinder it 
from producing vice and misery. Let Ignorance start 
how it will, it must run the same round of low appe- 
tites, poverty, slavery, and superstition. Some of us 
know this well — nay, I will say, feel it; for knowledge 
of this kind cuts deep ; and to us it is one of the most 
painful facts belonging to our condition that there are 
numbers of our fellow-workmen who are so far from 
feeling in the same way, that they never use the imper- 
fect opportunities already offered them for giving their 
children some schooling, but turn their little ones of 
tender age into bread-winners, often at cruel tasks, ex- 
posed to the horrible infection of childish vice. Of 
course, the causes of these hideous things go a long way 
back. Parents' misery has made parents' wickedness. 
But we, who are still blessed with the hearts of fathers 
and the consciences of men — we who have some knowl* 
edge of the curse entailed on broods of creatures in 
human shape, whose enfeebled bodies and dull, per- 
verted minds are mere centres of uneasiness, in whom 
even appetite is feeble, and joy impossible — I say wo 



268 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

are bound to use all the means at our command to help 
in putting a stop to this horror. Here, it seems to me, 
is a way in which we may use extended co-operation 
among us to the most momentous of all purposes, and 
make conditions of enrolment that would strengthen 
all educational measures. It is true enough that there 
is a low sense of parental duties in the nation at large, 
and that numbers who have no excuse in bodily hard- 
ship seem to think it a light thing to beget children — 
to bring human beings, with all their tremendous possi- 
bilities, into this difficult world — and then take little 
heed how they are disciplined and furnished for the 
perilous journey they are sent on without any asking 
of their own. This is a sin shared in more or less by 
all classes ; but there are sins which, like taxation, fall 
the heaviest on the poorest, and none have such galling 
reasons as we woi'king men to try and rouse to the ut- 
most the feeling of responsibility in fathers and moth- 
ers. We have been urged into co-operation by the 
pressure of common demands. In war men need each 
other more; and where a given point has to be de- 
fended, fighters inevitably find themselves shoulder to 
shoulder. So fellowship grows; so grow the rules of 
fellowship, which gradually shape themselves to thor- 
oughness as the idea of a common good becomes more 
complete. We feel a right to say. If you will be one of 
us, you must make such and such a contribution, you 
must renounce such and such a separate advantage, you 
must set your face against such and such an infringe- 
ment. If we have any false ideas about our common 
good, our rules will be wrong, and we shall be co- 
operating to damage each other. But now, here is a 



BY FELIX HOLT. 269 

part of our good, without which everything else we 
strive for will be worthless — I mean the rescue of our 
children. Let us demand from the members of our 
Unions that they fullil their duty as parents in this 
definite matter, which rules can reach. Let us demand 
that they send their children to school, so as not to go 
on recklessly breeding a moral pestilence among us, 
just as strictly as we demand that they pay their con- 
tributions to a common fund, understood to be for a 
common benefit. While we watch our public men, let 
us watch one another as to this duty, which is also pub- 
lic, and more momentous even than obedience to sani- 
tary regulations. While we resolutely declare against 
the wickedness in high places, let us set ourselves also 
against the wickedness in low places; not quarrelling 
which came first, or which is the worst of the two — 
not trying to settle the miserable precedence of plague 
or famine, but insisting unflinchingly on remedies once 
ascertained, and summoning those who hold the treas- 
ure of knowledge to remember that they hold it in 
trust, and that with them lies the task of searching for 
new remedies, and finding the right methods of apply- 
ing them. 

To find right remedies and right methods ! Here is 
the great function of knowledge : here the life of one man 
may make a fresh era straight away, in which a sort of 
suffering that has existed shall exist no more. For the 
thousands of years, down to the middle of the sixteenth 
century since Christ, that human limbs had been hacked 
and amputated, nobody knew how to stop the bleeding 
except by searing the ends of the vessels with red-hot 
iron. But then came a man named Ambrose Pare, and 



270 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, 

said, " Tie up the arteries !" That was a fine word to 
utter. It contained the statement of a method — a plan 
by which a particular evil was forever assuaged. Let 
us try to discern the men whose words carry that sort 
of kernel, and choose such men to be our guides and 
representatives — not choose platform swaggerers, who 
bring us nothing but the ocean to make our broth with. 

To get the chief power into the hands of the wisest, 
which means to get our life regulated according to the 
truest principles mankind is in possession of, is a prob- 
lem as old as the very notion of wisdom. The solu- 
tion comes slowly, because men collectively can only be 
made to embrace principles, and to act on them, by the 
slow, stupendous teaching of the world's events. Men 
will go on planting potatoes, and nothing else but pota- 
toes, till a potato disease comes and forces them to find 
out the advantage of a varied crop. Selfishness, stu- 
pidity, sloth, persist in trying to adapt the world to their 
desires, till a time comes when the world manifests it- 
self as too decidedly inconvenient to them. Wisdom 
stands outside of man and urges itself upon him, like 
the marks of the changing seasous, before it finds a 
home within him, directs his actions, and from the pre- 
cious effects of obedience begets a corresponding love. 

But while still outside of us, wisdom often looks ter- 
rible, and wears strange forms, wrapped in the chang- 
ing conditions of a strnggling world. It wears now the 
form of wants and just demands in a great multitude 
of British men ; wants and demands urged into exist- 
ence by the forces of a maturing world. And it is in 
virtue of this — in virtue of this presence of wisdom on 
our side as a mighty fact, physical and moral, which 



BY FELIX HOLT. 271 

must enter into and shape the thoughts and actions of 
mankind — that we working men have obtained the 
suffrage. Not because we are an excellent multitude, 
but because we are a needy multitude. 

But now, for our own part, we have seriously to con- 
sider this outside wisdom which lies in the supreme un- 
alterable nature of things, and watch to give it a home 
within us and obey it. If the claims of the unendowed 
multitude of working men hold within them princi- 
ples which must shape the future, it is not less true 
that the endowed classes, in their inheritance from the 
past, hold the precious material without which no 
worthy, noble future can be moulded. Many of the 
highest uses of life are in their keeping; and if privi- 
lege has often been abused, it has also been the nurse of 
excellence. Here again we have to submit ourselves to 
the great law of inheritance. If we quarrel with the way 
in which the labors and earnings of the past have been 
preserved and handed down, we are just as bigoted, just 
as narrow, just as wanting in that religion which keeps 
an open ear and obedient mind to the teachings of fact, 
as we accuse those of being who quarrel with the new 
truths and new needs which are disclosed in the pres 
ent. The deeper insight we get into the causes of hu- 
man trouble, and the ways by which men are made 
better and happier, the less we shall be inclined to the 
unprofitable spirit and practice of reproaching classes 
as such in a wholesale fashion. Not all the evils of our 
condition are such as we can justly blame others for ; 
and, I repeat, many of them are such as no change of 
institutions can quickly remedy. To discern between 
the evils that energy can remove and the evils that 



272 ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 

patience must bear, makes the difference between man- 
liness and childishness, between good sense and folly. 
And, more than that, without such discernment, seeing 
that we have grave duties towards our own bod}^ and 
the country at large, we can hardly escape acts of fatal 
rashness and injustice. 

I am addressing a mixed assembly of workmen, and 
some of you may be as well or better fitted than I am 
to take up this office. But they will not think it amiss 
in me that I have tried to bring together the considera- 
tions most likely to be of service to us in preparing our- 
selves for the use of our new opportunities. I have 
avoided touching on special questions. The best help 
towards judging well on these is to approach them in 
the right temper, without vain expectation, and with a 
resolution which is mixed with temperance. 



LEAVES PROM A NOTE -BOOK 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

Authorship. 

To lay down in the shape of practical moral rules 
courses of conduct only to be made real by the rarest 
states of motive and disposition, tends not to elevate, but 
to degrade the general standard, by turning that rare at- 
tainment from an object of admiration into an impossi- 
ble prescription, against which the average nature first 
rebels and then flings out ridicule. It is for art to pre- 
sent images of a lovelier order than the actual, gently 
winning the affections, and so determining the taste. 
But in any rational criticism of the time which is meant 
to guide a practical reform, it is idle to insist that action 
ought to be this or that, without considering how far 
the outward conditions of such change are present, even 
supposing the inward disposition towards it. Practically, 
we must be satisfied to aim at something short of per- 
fection — and at something very much further off it in 
one case than in another. While the fundamental con- 
ceptions of morality seem as stationary through ages as 
the laws of life, so that a moral manual written eighteen 
centuries ago still admonishes us that we are low in our 
attainments, it is quite otherwise with the degree to 
which moral conceptions have penetrated the various 
forms of social activity, and made what may be cailea 
the special conscience of each calling, art, or industry. 



276 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

"While on some points of social dutj public opinion lias 
reached a tolerably high standard, on others a public 
opinion is not yet born ; and there are even some func- 
tions and practices with regard to which men far above 
the line in honorableness of nature feel hardly any 
scrupulosity, though their consequent behavior is easily 
shown to be as injurious as bribery, or any other slowly 
poisonous procedure which degrades the social vitar**"y. 
Among those callings which have not yet acquired 
anything near a full-grown conscience in the public 
mind is Authorship. Yet the changes brought about 
by the spread of instruction and the consequent strag- 
gles of an uneasy ambition, are, or at least might well 
be, forcing on many minds the need of some regulating 
principle with regard to the publication of intellectual 
products, which would override the rule of the market : 
a principle, that is, which should be derived from a fix- 
ing of the author's vocation according to those charac- 
teristics in which it differs from the other bread-winning 
professions. Let this be done, if possible, without any 
cant, which would carry the subject into Utopia, away 
from existing needs. The guidance wanted is a clear 
notion of what should justify men and women in assum- 
ing public authorship, and of the way in which they 
should be determined by what is usually called success. 
But the forms of authorship must be distinguished; 
journalism, for example, carrying a necessity for that 
continuous production which in other kinds of writing 
is precisely the evil to be fought against, and judicious 
careful compilation, which is a great public service, hold- 
ing in its modest diligence a guarantee against those 
ded^Actions of vanity and idleness which draw many a 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK, 277 

young gentleman into reviewing, instead of the sorting 
and copying which his small talents could not rise to 
with any vigor and completeness. 

A manufacturer goes on producing calicoes as long 
and as fast as he can find a market for them ; and in 
obeying this indication of demand he gives his factory 
its utmost usefulness to the world in general and to him- 
self in particular. Another manufacturer buys a new 
invention "of some light kind likely to attract the public 
fancy, is successful in finding a multitude who will give 
their' testers for the transiently desirable commodity, 
and before the fashion is out, pockets a considerable 
sum : the commodity w^as colored with a green which 
had arsenic in it that damaged the factory workers and 
the purchasers. What then ? These, he contends (or 
does not know or care to contend), are superficial effects^ 
which it Is folly to dwell upon while we have epidemic 
diseases and bad government. 

The first manufacturer we will suppose blameless. Is 
an author simply on a par with him, as to the rules of 
production 'i 

The author's capital is his brain-power — power of in- 
vention, power of writing. The manufacturer's capital, 
in fortunate cases, is being continually reproduced and 
increased. Here is the first grand difference between 
the capital which is turned into calico and the brain 
capital which is turned into literature. The calico 
scarcely varies in appropriateness of quality, no con- 
sumer is in danger of getting too much of it, and neg- 
lecting his boots, hats, and flannel shirts in consequence. 
.That there should be large quantities of the same sort 
in the calico manufacture is an advantage : the same' 



278 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

ness is desirable, and nobody is likely to roll his person 
in so many folds of calico as to become a mere bale of 
cotton goods, and nullify his senses of hearing and touch, 
while his morbid passion for Manchester shirtings makes 
him still cry " More !" The wise manufacturer gets 
richer and richer, and the consumers he supplies have 
their real wants satisfied and no more. 

Let it be taken as admitted that all legitimate social 
activity must be beneficial to others besides the agent. 
To write prose or verse as a private exercise and satis- 
faction is not social activity ; nobody is culpable for 
this any more than for learning other people's verse by 
heart, if he does not neglect his proper business in con- 
sequence. If the exercise made him sillier or secretly 
more self-satisfied, that, to be sure, would be a round- 
about way of injuring society ; for though a certain 
mixture of silliness may lighten existence, we have at 
present more than enough. 

But man or woman who publishes writings inevitably 
assumes the office of teacher or influencer of the public 
mind. Let him protest as he will that he only seeks to 
amuse, and has no pretension to do more than while 
away an hour of leisure or weariness—" the idle singer 
of an empty day'- — he can no more escape influencing 
the moral taste, and with it the action of the intelligence, 
than a setter of fashions in furniture and dress can fill 
the shops with his designs and leave the garniture of 
persons and houses unaffected by his industry. 

For a man who has a certain gift of writing to say, 
" 1 will make the most of it while the public likes my 
wares, as long as the market is open and I am able to 
supply it at a money profit — such profit being the sign 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 279 

of liking" — he should have a belief that his wares have 
nothing akin to the arsenic green in them, and also that 
his continuous supply is secure from a degradation in 
quality which the habit of consumption encouraged in 
the buyers may hinder them from marking their sense 
of by rejection ; so that they complain, but pay, and 
read while they complain. Unless he has that belief, 
lie is on a level with the manufacturer who gets rich by 
fanc3^-wares colored with arsenic green. He really cares 
for nothing but his income. He carries on authorship 
on the principle of the gin-palace. 

And bad literature of the sort called amusing is spir- 
itual gin. 

A writer capable of being popular can only escape this 
social culpability by first of all getting a profound sense 
that literature is good-for-nothing if it is not admira- 
bly good : he must detest bad literature too heartily to 
be indifferent about producing it if only other people 
don't detest it. And if he has this sign of the divine 
afflatus within him, he must make up his mind that he 
must not pursue authorship as a vocation with a trad- 
ing determination to get rich by it. It is in the high- 
est sense lawful for him to get as good a price as he 
honorably can for the best work he is capable of; but 
not for him to force or hurry his production, or even 
do over again what has already been done, either by 
himself or others, so as to render his work no real con- 
tribution, for the sake of bringing up his income to thi 
fancy pitch. An author who would keep a pure and 
noble conscience, and with that a developing instead of 
degenerating intellect and taste, must cast out of his 
aims the aim to be rich. And therefore he must keep 



280 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

bis expenditure low — he must make for himself no dire 
necessity to earn sums in order to pay bills. 

In opposition to this, it is common to cite Walter 
Scott's case, and cry, " Would the world have got as 
much innocent (and therefore salutary) pleasure out of 
Scott, if he had not brought himself under the pressure 
of money-need?" I think it would — and more; but 
since it is impossible to prove what would have been, 
I confine myself to replying that Scott was not justi- 
fied in bringing himself into a position where severe 
consequences to others depended on his retaining or 
not retaining his mental competence. Still less is Scott 
to be taken as an example to be followed in this mat- 
ter, even if it were admitted that money-need served to 
press at once the best and the most work out of him ; 
any more than a great navigator who has brought his 
ship to port in spite of having taken a wrong and peril- 
ous route, is to be followed as to his route by naviga- 
tors who are not yet ascertained to be great. 

But after the restraints and rules which must guide 
the acknowledged author, whose power of making a 
real contribution is ascertained, comes the considera- 
tion, how or on what principle are we to find a check 
for that troublesome disposition to authorship arising 
from the spread of what is called Education, which 
turns a growing rush of vanity and ambition into this 
current? The well -taught, an increasing number, are 
almost all able to write essays on given themes, which 
demand new periodicals to save them from lying in 
cold obstruction. The ill-taught — also an increasing 
number — read many books, seem to themselves able to 
write others surprisingly like what they read, and prob* 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 281 

ably superior, since the variations are such as please 
their own fancy, and such as they would have recom- 
mended to their favorite authors : these ill-tauglit per- 
sons are perhaps idle and want to give themselves " an 
object;" or they are short of money, and feel disinclined 
to get it by a commoner kind of work ; or they find a 
facility in putting sentences together which gives them 
more than a suspicion that they have genius, which, if 
not very cordially believed in by private confidants, 
will be recognized by an impartial public ; or, finally, 
they observe that writing is sometimes well paid, and 
sometimes a ground of fame or distinction, and with- 
out any use of punctilious logic, they conclude to be- 
come writers themselves. 

As to these ill-taught persons, whatever medicines of 
a spiritual sort can be found good against mental empti- 
ness and inflation — such medicines are needful for 
iheTYi. The contempt of the world for their produc- 
tions only comes after their disease has wrought its 
worst effects. But what is to be said to the well- 
taught, who have such an alarming equality in their 
power of writing "like a scholar and a gentleman?" 
Perhaps they, too, can only be cured by the medicine 
of higher ideals in social duty, and by a fuller represen- 
tation to themselves of the processes by which the gen- 
eral culture is furthered or impeded. 



Judgments on Authors. 

In endeavoring to estimate a remarkable writer who 

aimed at more than temporary influence, we have first 

to consider what was his individual contribution to the 
14* 



282 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

spiritual wealth of mankind? Had he a new concep' 
tion ? Did he animate long -known but neglected 
truths with new vigor, and cast fresh light on their re- 
lation to other admitted truths? Did he impregnate 
any ideas with a fresh store of emotion, and in this way 
enlarge the area of moral sentiment? Did he, by a 
wise emphasis here, and a wise disregard there, give a 
more useful or beautiful proportion to aims or motives? 
And even where his thinking was most mixed with the 
sort of mistake which is obvious to the majority, as 
well as that which can on\y be discerned by the in- 
structed, or made manifest by the progress of things, 
has it that salt of a noble enthusiasm which should re- 
buke our critical discrimination if its correctness is in- 
spired with a less admirable habit of feeling? 

This is not the common or easy course to take in 
estimating a modern writer. It requires considerable 
knowledge of what he has himself done, as well as of 
what others had done before him, or what they were 
doing contemporaneously ; it requires deliberate reflec- 
tion as to the degree in which our own prejudices may 
hinder us from appreciating the intellectual or moral 
bearing of what on a first view offends us. An easier 
course is to notice some salient mistakes, and take them 
as decisive of the writer's incompetence ; or to find out 
that something apparently much the same as what he 
has said in some connection not clearly ascertained had 
been said by somebody else, though without great ef- 
fect, until this new effect of discrediting the others 
originalit}^ had shown itself as an adequate final cause; 
or to pronounce from the point of view of individual 
taste that this writer for whom reo:ard is claimed is 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 283 

repulsive, wearisome, not to be borne except by those 
dull persons who are of a different opinion. 

Elder writers who have passed into classics were 
doubtless treated in this easy way when they were still 
under the misfortune of being recent — nay, are still 
dismissed with the same rapidity of judgment by dar- 
ing ignorance. But people who think that they have 
a reputation to lose in the matter of knowledge, have 
looked into cyclopaedias and histories of philosophy or 
literature, and possessed themselves of the duly bal- 
anced epithets concerning the immortals. They are 
not left to their own unguided rashness, or their own 
unguided pusillanimity. And it is this sheeplike flock 
who have no direct impressions, no spontaneous delight, 
no genuine objection or self-confessed neutrality in re- 
lation to the writers become classic — it is these w^ho are 
incapable of passing a genuine judgment on the living. 
Necessarily. The susceptibility they have kept active 
is a susceptibility to their own reputation for passing 
the right judgment, not the susceptibility to qualities 
in the object of judgment. Who learns to discrimi- 
nate shades of color by considering what is expected of 
him ? The habit of expressing borrowed judgments 
stupefies the sensibilities, which are the only founda- 
tion of genuine judgments, just as the constant reading 
and retailing of results from other men's observations 
through the microscope, without ever looking through 
the lens one's self, is an instruction in some truths and 
some prejudices, but is no instruction in observant sus- 
ceptibility ; on the contrary, it breeds a habit of inward 
seeing according to verbal statement, which dulls the 
power of outward seeing according to visual evidence. 



284 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

On this subject, as on so many others, it is difficult 
to strike the balance between the educational needs of 
passivity or receptivity, and independent selection. We 
should learn nothing without the tendency to implicit 
acceptance ; but there must clearly be a limit to such 
mental submission, else we should come to a standstill. 
The human mind would be no better than a dried 
specimen, representing an unchangeable type. When 
the assimilation of new matter ceases, decay must be- 
gin. In a reasoned self -restraining deference there is 
as much energy as in rebellion ; but among the less 
capable, one must admit that the superior energy is on 
the side of the rebels. And certainly a man who dares 
to say that he finds an eminent classic feeble here, ex- 
travagant there, and in general overrated, may chance 
to give an opinion which has some genuine discrimina- 
tion in it concerning a new work or a living thinker — 
an opinion such as can hardly ever be got from the 
reputed judge who is a correct echo of the most ap- 
proved phrases concerning those who have been already 
canonized. 



Story -Telling, 

What is the best way of telling a story ? Since the 
standard must be the interest of the audience, there 
must be several or many good ways rather than one 
best. For we get interested in the stories life presents 
to us through divers orders and modes of presentation. 
Yery commonly our first awakening to a desire of 
knowing a man's past or future comes from our seeing 
Uim as a stranger in some unusual or pathetic or hu- 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 285 

morous situation, or manifesting some remarkable char- 
acteristics. We make inquiries in consequence, or we 
become observant and attentive whenever opportunities 
of knowing more may happen to present themselves 
without our search. You have seen a refined face 
among the prisoners picking tow in jail ; you after- 
wards see the same unforgetable face in a pulpit: he 
must be of dull fibre who would not care to know more 
about a life which showed such contrasts, though he 
might gather his knowledge in a fragmentary and un- 
chronological way. 

Again, we have heard much, or at least something 
not quite common, about a man whom we have never 
geen, and hence we look round with curiosity when we 
are told that he is present; whatever he says or does 
before us is charged with a meaning due to our previ- 
ous hearsay knowledge about him, gathered either from 
dialogue of which he was expressly and emphatically 
the subject, or from incidental remark, or from general 
report either in or out of print. 

These indirect ways of arriving at knowledge are al- 
ways the most stirring even in relation to impersonal 
subjects. To see a chemical experiment gives an at- 
tractiveness to -a definition of chemistry, and fills it with 
a significance which it would never have had without 
the pleasant shock of an unusual sequence, such as the 
transformation of a solid into gas, and vice versa. To 
see a word for the first time either as substantive or ad- 
jective in a connection where we care about knowing 
its complete meaning, is the way to vivify its meaning 
in our recollection. Curiosity becomes the more eager 
from the incompleteness of the first information. More- 



286 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

over, it is in this way that memory works in its in- 
cidental revival of events: some salient experience 
appears in inward vision, and in consequence the ante- 
cedent facts are retraced from what is regarded as the 
beginning of the episode in which that experience made 
a more or less strikingly memorable part. " Ah ! I re- 
member addressing the mob from the hustings at West- 
minster — you wouldn't have thought that I could ever 
have been in such a position. Well, how I came there 

was in this way ;" and then follows a retrospective 

narration. 

The modes of telling a story founded on these proc- 
esses of outward and inward life derive their effective- 
ness from the superior mastery of images and pictures 
in grasping the attention — or, one might say with more 
fundamental accuracy, from the fact that our earliest, 
strongest impressions, our most intimate convictions, 
are simply images added to more or less of sensation. 
These are the primitive instruments of thought. Hence 
it is not surprising that early poetry took this way — 
telling a daring deed, a glorious achievement, without 
caring for what went before. The desire for orderly 
narration is a later, more reflective birth. The presence 
of the Jack in the box affects every child : it is the 
more reflective lad, the miniature philosopher, who 
wants to know how he got there. 

The only stories life presents to us in an orderly way 
are those of our autobiography, or the career of our 
companions from our childhood upwards, or perhaps of 
our own children. But it is a great art to make a con- 
nected strictly relevant narrative of such careers as we 
can recount from the beginning. In these cases the 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 287 

sequence of associations is almost sure to overmaster the 
sense of proportion. Such narratives ah ovo are sum- 
mer' s-day stories for happy loungers; not the cup of 
self-forgetting excitement to the busy who can snatch 
an hour of entertainment. 

But the simple opening of a story with a date and 
necessary account of places and people, passing on 
quietly towards the more rousing elements of narrative 
and dramatic presentation, without need of retrospect, 
has its advantages, which have to be measured by the 
nature of the story. Spirited narrative, w^ithout more 
than a touch of dialogue here and there, may be made 
eminently interesting, and is suited to the novelette. 
Examples of its charm are seen in the short tales in 
which the French have a mastery never reached by the 
English, who usually demand coarser flavors than are 
given by that delightful gayety which is well described 
by La Fontaine^ as not anything that provokes fits of 
laughter, but a certain charm, an agreeable mode of 
handling, which lends attractiveness to all subjects, even 
the most serious. And it is this sort of gayety which 
plays around the best French novelettes. But the open- 
ing chapters of the " Yicar of Wakefield" are as fine as 
anything that can be do".e in this way. 

Why should a story not be told in the most irregular 
fashion that an author's idiosyncrasy may prompt, pro- 
vided that he gives us what we can enjoy ? The objec- 
tions to Sterne's wild way of telling "Tristram Shandy" 



* " Je n'appelle pas gayety ce qui excite le rire, mais un certain 
charme, nn air agr^able qu'on jieut donuer a toutes sortes de sujets, 
mesme les plus s^rieux.'* — Preface to Fables. 



288 LEAVES FKOM A NOTE-BOOK. 

lie more solidly in the quality of the interrupting mat= 
ter than in the fact of interruption. The dear public 
would do well to reflect that they are often bored from 
the want of flexibility in their own minds. They are 
like the topers of " one liquor." 



Historic Imagination. 

The exercise of a veracious imagination in historical 
picturing seems to be capable of a development that 
might help the judgment greatly with regard to present 
and future events. By veracious imagination, I mean 
the working out in detail of the various steps by which 
a political or social change was reached, using all extant 
evidence and supplying deficiencies by careful ana- 
logical creation. How triumphant opinions originally 
spread ; how institutions arose ; what were the condi- 
tions of great inventions, discoveries, or theoretic con- 
ceptions ; what circumstances affecting individual lots 
are attendant on the decay of long-established systems 
— all these grand elements of history require the illumi- 
nation of special imaginative treatment. But effective 
truth in this application of art requires freedom from 
the vulgar coercion of conventional plot, which is be- 
come hardly of higher influence on imaginative repre- 
sentation than a detailed "order" for a picture sent by 
a rich grocer to an eminent painter — allotting a certain 
portion of the canvas to a rural scene, another to a 
fashionable group, with a request for a murder in the 
middle distance, and a little comedy to relieve it. A 
slight approximation to the veracious glimpses of his- 
tory artistically presented, which I am indicating, but 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 289 

applied only to an incident of contemporary life, is 
" Un Paquet de Lettres " by Giistave Droz. For want 
of such real, minute vision of how changes come about 
in the past, we fall into ridiculously inconsistent esti- 
mates of actual movements, condemning in the present 
what we belaud in the past, and pronouncing impossible 
processes that have been repeated again and again in 
the historical preparation of the very system under 
which we live. A false kind of idealization dulls our 
perception of the meaning in words when they relate 
to past events which have had a glorious issue ; for lack 
of comparison no warning image rises to check scorn 
of the very phrases which in other associations are con- 
secrated. 

Utopian pictures help the reception of ideas as to 
constructive results, but hardly so much as a vivid 
presentation of how results have been actually brought 
about, especially in religious and social change. And 
there is the pathos, the heroism, often accompanying the 
decay and final struggle of old systems, which has not 
had its share of tragic commemoration. "What really 
took place in and around Constantino before, upon, and 
immediately after his declared conversion ? Could a 
momentary flash be thrown on Eusebins in his sayings 
and doings as an ordinary man in bishop's garments? 
Or on Julian and Libanius? There has been abundant 
writing on such great turning-points, but not such as 
serves to instruct the imagination in true comparison. 
I want something different from the abstract treatment 
which belongs to grave history from a doctrinal point 
of view, and something different from the schemed 
picturesqueness of ordinary historical fiction. I want 

13 



290 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

brief, severely conscientious reproductions, in their con- 
Crete incidents, of pregnant movements in the past. 



Value in Originality. 

The supremacy given in European cultures to the 
literatures of Greece and Rome has had an effect al- 
most equal to that of a common religion in binding the 
Western nations together. It is foolish to be forever 
complaining of the consequent uniformity, as if there 
were an endless power of originality in the human 
mind. Great and precious origination must always be 
comparatively rare, and can only exist on condition of 
a wide, massive uniformity. When a multitude of men 
have learned to use the same language in speech and 
writing, then and then only can tlie greatest masters of 
language arise. For in wliat does their mastery consist ? 
They use words which are already a familiar medium of 
understanding and sympathy in such a way as greatly 
to enlarge the understanding and sympathy. Original- 
ity of this order changes the wild grasses into world- 
feeding grain. Idiosyncrasies are pepper and spices of 
questionable aroma. 

To the Prosaic all Things are Prosaic. 

<'Is the time we live in prosaic?" "That depends: 
it must certainly be prosaic to one whose mind takes a 
prosaic stand in contemplating it." " But it is precisely 
the most poetic minds that most groan over the vulgar- 
ity of the present, its degenerate sensibility to beauty, 
eagerness for materialistic explanation, noisy triviality." 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 291 

" Perhaps they would have had the same complaint to 
make about the age of Elizabeth, if, living then, they 
had fixed their attention on its more sordid elements, 
or had been subject to the grating influence of its every- 
day meannesses, and had sought refuge from them in 
the contemplation of whatever suited their taste in a 
former age." 



'''Dear Religious LoveP 

We get our knowledge of perfect Love by glimpses 
and in fragments chiefly — the rarest only among us 
knowing what it is to worship and caress, reverence and 
cherish, divide our bread and mingle our thoughts at 
one and the same time, under inspiration of the same 
object. Finest aromas will so often leave the fruits to 
which they are native and cling elsewhere, leaving the 
fruit empty of all but its coarser structure ! 



We Make our Own Precedents. 

In the times of national mixture when modern Eu- 
rope was, as one may say, a-brewing, it was open to a 
man who did not like to be judged by the Roman law 
to choose which of certain other codes he would be tried 
by. So, in our own times, they who openly adopt a 
higher rule than their neighbors do thereby make act 
of choice as to the laws and precedents by which they 
shall be approved or condemned, and thus it may hap- 
pen that we see a man morally pilloried for a very 
customary deed, and yet having no right to complain, 
inasmuch as in his foregoing deliberative course of life 
he had referred himself to the tribunal of those higher 



292 LEAVES FKOM A NOTE-BOOK. 

conceptions, before which such a deed is without que^ 
tion condemnable. 

Birth of Tolerance, 

Tolerance first comes through equality of struggle, as 
in the case of Arianism and Catholicism in the early 
times — Yalens, Eastern and Arian, Yalentinian, West- 
ern and Catholic, alike publishing edicts of tolerance; 
or it comes from a common need of relief from an op- 
pressive predominance, as when James II. published his 
Act of Tolerance towards non-Anglicans,, being forced 
into liberality towards the Dissenters by the need to get 
it for the Catholics. Community of interest is the root 
of justice; community of suffering, the root of pity; 
community of joy, the root of love. 



Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in 
clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that en- 
shrouds others. 

Sympathetic people are often incommunicative about 
themselves: they give back reflected images which hide 
their own depths. 

The pond said to the ocean, " Why do you rage so 1 
The wind is not so very violent — nay, it is already 
fallen. Look at me. I rose into no foaming waves, 
and am already smooth again." 



Felix qui non jpotuit. 
Many feel themselves very confidently on safe ground 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 293 

when they say : It must be good for man to know the 
Truth. But it is clearly not good for a particular man 
to know some particular truth, as irremediable treachery 
in one whom he cherishes — better that he should die 
without knowing it. 

Of scientific truth, is it not conceivable that some 
facts as to the tendency of things affecting the final 
destination of the race might be more hurtful when 
they had entered into the human consciousness than 
they would have been if they had remained purely ex- 
ternal in their activity? 



Divine Grace a Real Emanation. 

There is no such thing as an impotent or neutral 
deity, if the deity be really believed in, and con- 
templated either in prayer or meditation. Every object 
of thought reacts on the mind that conce>v?.r 5t, still 
more on that which habitually contemplates it. In this 
we may be said to solicit help from a generalization or 
abstraction. Wordsworth had this truth in his con- 
sciousness when he wrote (in the Prelude) : 

" Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort 
Of elements and agents, Under-powers, 
Subordinate helpers of the living mind" — 

not indeed precisely in the same relation, but with a 
meaning which involves that wider moral influence. 



"^ Fine Excess^ Feeling is Energy. 
One can hardly insist too much, in the present stage 



294 LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 

of thinking, on the efficacy of feeling in stimulating 
to ardent co-operation, quite apart from the conviction 
that such co-operation is needed for the achievement of 
the end in view. Just as hatred will vent itself in pri- 
vate curses no longer believed to have any potency, and 
joy, in private singing far out among the woods and 
fields, so sympathetic feeling can only be satisfied by join- 
ing in the action which expresses it, though the added 
"Bravo!" the added push, the added penny, is no more 
than a grain of dust on a rolling mass. When students 
take the horses out of a political hero's carriage, and 
draw him home by the force of their own muscle, the 
struggle in each is simply to draw or push, without con- 
sideration whether his place would not be as well filled 
by sonjebody else, or whether his one arm be really 
needful to the effect. It is under the same inspiration 
that abundant help rushes towards the scene of a fire, 
rescuing imperilled lives, and laboring with generous 
rivalry in carrying buckets. So the old blind King 
John of Bohemia at the battle of CreQy begged his vas- 
eals to lead him into the fight that he might stj'ike a 
good blow, though his own stroke, possibly fatal to 
himself, could not turn by a hair's-breadth the imperi- 
ous course of victory. 

The question, " Of what use is it for me to work 
towards an end confessedly good ?" comes from that 
sapiess kind of reasoning which is falsely taken for a 
sign of supreme mental activity, but is really due to 
languor, or incapability of that mental grasp which 
makes objects strongly present, and to a lack of sym- 
pathetic emotion. In the " Spanish Gypsy " Fedalma 
says— 



LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. . 295 

" The grandest death! to die in vain — ^for Love 
Greater than sways the forces of the world " * — 

referring to the image of the disciples throwing them- 
selves, consciously in vain, on the Roman spears. I 
really believe and mean this — not as a rule of general 
action, but as a possible grand instance of determining 
energy in human sympathy, which even in particular 
cases, where it has only a magnificent futility, is more 
adorable, or as we say divine, than nnpitying force, or 
than a prudent calculation of results. Perhaps it is an 
implicit joy in the resources of our human nature 
which has stimulated admiration for acts of self-sacri- 
fice which are vain as to their immediate end. Marcus 
Curtius was probably not imagined as concluding to 
himself that he and his horse would so fill up the gap 
as to make a smooth terra firma. The impulse and act 
made the heroism, not the correctness of adaptation. 
No doubt the passionate inspiration which prompts and 
sustains a course of self-sacrificing labor in the light of 
soberly estimated results gathers the highest title to 
our veneration, and makes the supreme heroism. But 
the generous leap of impulse is needed too, to swell the 
flood of sympathy in us beholders, that we may not fall 
completely under the mastery of calculation, which in 
its turn may fail of ends for want of energy got from 
ardor. We have need to keep the sluices open for 
possible influxes of the rarer sort. 

* V. what Demosthenes says ("De Corongi") ahout Athens pur- 
euiug the same course, though she had known from the beginning 
that her heroic resistance would he in vain. 



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MACAULAY'S ENGLAND. The History of England from the 
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MOTLEY'S DUTCH REPUBLIC. The Rise of the Dutch Re- 
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MOTLEY'S UNITED NETHERLANDS. History of the Unit^ 
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Twelve Years' Truce — 1584-1609. With a full View of the 
English-Dutch Struggle against Spain, and of the Origin and 
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MOTLEY'S JOHN OF BARNEVELD. The Life and Death of 
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HILDRETH'S UNITED STATES. History of the United 
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LODGE'S ENGLISH COLONIES IN AMERICA. English 
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STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. A Dictionary of 
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DU CHAILLU'S LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN. Sum- 
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2 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $7 50; Half Calf, $12 00. 

LOSSING'S CYCLOPEDIA OF UNITED STATES HISTO- 
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LOSSING'S FIELD-BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION. Pic- 
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MULLER'S POLITICAL HISTORY OF RECENT TIMES 

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WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF SAMUEL J. TILDEN. 
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GENERAL DIX'S MEMOIRS. Memoirs of John Adams Dix. 
Compiled by his Son, Morgan Dix. With Five Steel-plate 
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$5 00. 

HUNT'S MEMOIR OF MRS. LIVINGSTON. A Memoir of 

Mrs. Edward Livingston. With Letters hitherto Unpublished. 
By Louise Livingston Hunt. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE. George Eliot's Life, Related in her 
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PEARS'S FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. The Fall of Con- 
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Edwin Pears, LL.B. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50. 

RANKE'S UNIVERSAL HISTORY. The Oldest Historical 
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Edited by G. W. Prothero, Fellow and Tutor of King's Col- 
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LIFE AND TIMES OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. A 

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Based on Family Documents and the Recollections of Personal 
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STANLEY'S THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT. Through 

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STANLEY'S CONGO. The Congo and the Founding of its 
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GREEN'S ENGLISH PEOPLE. History of the English Peo- 
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BAKER'S ISMAILIA : a Narrative of the Expedition to Central 
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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. Edited by John Morlet. 

The following volumes are now ready. Others will folloAv: 

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By Professor Huxley. — Defoe. By W. Minto.— Bcrns. By Principal Shairp. 
— Spenser. By R. W. Church.— Thackeray. By A. Trollope. — Burke. By 
J. Morley.— Milton. By II. Pattison.— Sodthey. By E. Dowden.— Chaucer. 
By A. W. Ward. — BuNYAN. By J A. Froude. — Cowper. By G. Smith.— 
Pope. By L. Stephen. — Byron. By J. Nirhols. — Locke. By T. Fowler.— 

Wordsworth. By F. W. H. Myers. — Hawthorne. By Henry James, Jr. 

Dryden. By G. Saiutsbury.— Landor. By S. Colvin. — De Quincey. By D. 
Massou. — Lamb. By A. Ainger. — Bentley. By R. C. Jebb. — Dickens. By 
A. W. Ward. — Gray. ByE. W. Gosse. — Swift. By L. Stephen. — Sterne. By 
H. D. Traill. — Macaulay. By J. C. Morison. — Fielding. By A. Dobson.— 
Sheridan. By Mrs. Oliphant. — Addison. By W. J. Courthope. — Bacon. By 
R. W. Church.— Coleridge. By H. D. Traill.— Sir Philip Sidney. By J A. 
Symonds. 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. 



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COLERIDGE'S WORKS. The Complete Works of Samuel Tay- 
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REBER'S MEDIEVAL ART. History of Medieeval Art. By 
Dr. Fkanz von Reber. Translated and Augmented by Joseph 
Thacher Clarke. With 422 Illustrations, and a Glossary of 
Technical Terms. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00. 

REBER'S HISTORY OF ANCIENT ART. History of Ancient 
Art. By Dr. Franz von Reber. Revised by the Author. 
Translated and Augmented by Joseph Thacher Clarke. With 
310 Illustrations and a Glossary of Technical Terms. 8vo, 
Cloth, $3 50. 

NEWCOMB'S ASTRONOMY. Popular Astronomy. By Si- 
mon Newcomb, LL.D. With 112 Engravings, and 5 Maps of 
the Stars. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50 ; School Edition, I2mo, Cloth, 
$1 30. 

VAN-LENNEP'S bible lands. Bible Lands : their Modern 
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Van- Lennep, D.D, 350 Engravings and 2 Colored Maps. 
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CESN OLA'S CYPRUS. Cyprus: its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and 
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LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. The Last Journals of 
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his Faithful Servants Chuma and Susi. By Horace Waller. 
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Sheep, $6 00. 

BLAIKIE'S LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE. Memoir of 
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GRIFFIS'S JAPAN. The Mikado's Empire : Book I. History 
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1874. With Two Supplementary Chapters: Japan in 1883, 
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THE POETS AND POETRY OF SCOTLAND: From the 
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SCHLIEMANN'S ILIOS. Ilios, the City and Country of the 
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SCHLIEMANN'S TROJA. Troja. Results of the Latest Re- 
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SCHWEINFURTH'S HEART OF AFRICA. Three Years' 
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SMILES'S HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS. The Hugue- 
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and Ireland. By Samuel Smiles. With an Appendix rela- 
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SMILES'S HUGUENOTS AFTER THE REVOCATION. The 

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708 ^ 

5'S LIFE 



SMILES'S LIFE OF THE STEPHENSONS. The Life of 
George Stephenson, and of his Son, Robert Stephenson ; com- 
prising, also, a History of the Invention and Introduction of 
the Railway Locomotive. By Samuel Smiles. Illustrated 
8vo, Cloth, $3 00. ^ 

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